On 19 May 2026, the Spanish Supreme Court, the Tribunal Supremo, partially annulled Real Decreto 1312/2024. This Royal Decree regulated the mandatory Número de Registro de Alquiler, usually abbreviated as NRA, for holiday rentals and other forms of short-term rental in Spain. From the outset, the national registration system was already controversial. I wrote about this last year: https://lexforis.com/nl/aanvullende-beperkingen-op-vakantieverhuur-ii/.
The Spanish Supreme Court held that the central government had gone too far with this regulation. In effect, a second registration system was created at national level, alongside the regional registers that often already exist.
In Spain, the autonomous communities have their own powers within their territory, including in the field of tourist rentals. The creation of a national registration obligation for tourist properties was therefore seen as an infringement of those specific regional powers. The Spanish Supreme Court agreed.
European Regulation 2024/1028, the reason (or excuse?) for the measure, does not necessarily require a single national register. The regulation mainly harmonises existing or future registration procedures, on the understanding that the same property may not be subject to more than one registration procedure. So it is either one or the other, not both at the same time.
The registration power was placed with the problematic and controversial Spanish land registry, the Registro de la Propiedad. This registry is divided into many local offices, each with its own head, the so-called Registrador, and in practice unfortunately also often with its own interpretation. The Spanish land registry is known for operating in a rather old-fashioned and formalistic way. There has also been a certain tension for more than twenty years between Registradores and notaries. Both professional groups perform partly overlapping functions and sometimes seem to believe that the other profession is unnecessary. This has created a certain overzealousness among Spanish Registradores to make themselves heard more explicitly and thus reinforce the necessity of their position. This has many negative consequences for the real estate market.
The judgment also makes clear that, in this form, the Spanish land registry was not the right vehicle for maintaining this register. The issue was not the registration of rights relating to real estate, such as ownership, mortgages or other rights in rem. It was an administrative requirement aimed at collecting information about short-term rental, so that public authorities and Europe could develop policy on that basis.
What should therefore have been a simple registration to satisfy Europe’s need for statistics and control became, in practice, something completely different. It became a new battlefield between neighbours over whether an owner was allowed to rent out his property for tourist purposes, something that until then had been taken as the starting point unless there was a clear legal or statutory restriction. Some Registradores started, without being asked, to assess the statutes of homeowners’ associations. If the possibility of holiday rental was not expressly included, then according to them it was not allowed. Complete nonsense, many owners thought. A nice opportunity to bother the neighbour, other owners thought.
The registration obligation was also used as an excuse for another debate: the so-called housing crisis in Spain. Young people supposedly can no longer buy homes because “evil” investors are buying up all the houses for their own financial gain. That is a different discussion, so I will not go too deeply into it here. But the housing crisis is not an exclusively Spanish problem. It is happening almost everywhere in Europe. Nor do the causes lie mainly with investors, but with a multitude of factors. If I may briefly mention the most important causes in Spain: the lack of effective legal protection against non-paying tenants, years of political mismanagement in social housing, and the absence of clear, fair rules to actually give young people a helping hand in finding a home.
The result of the judgment is that the national registration obligation loses its legal basis. Because annulment in principle has retroactive effect, this means that owners were not required, from the introduction of that obligation, to obtain a unique national NRA number on top of their regional registration in order to advertise on platforms such as Airbnb or Booking. However, one should be careful with the idea that anyone whose NRA was previously refused is now automatically “free” to rent out. The annulment of the national regulation removes the basis for the NRA, but individual files may still give rise to discussions about decisions already taken, regional permits, municipal restrictions, homeowners’ association rules or other ongoing procedures.
Unfortunately, the judgment says nothing about owners’ freedom to rent out their property. That is a missed opportunity.
Regional and local permits and registrations remain, insofar as they apply, fully mandatory. The judgment is therefore mainly a temporary victory for owners, because it removes the administrative burden of double registration.
In short, the judgment does not put an end to administrative supervision of short-term rental, nor does it affect regional or local registers. What is declared invalid is the State’s attempt to introduce, through the Spanish land registry, a second national registration procedure as a condition for advertising short-term stays on online platforms.
The State nevertheless retains the power to coordinate data, maintain the digital one-stop system and safeguard cooperation between regional and local registers, whatever that may mean in practice. But the next judgment will probably deal with that in the soap opera of the current legislator.
Roeland van Passel