The rising cost of rent in the Canary Islands has been attributed to various factors, including the lack of public housing, the influence of vulture funds, and the growth of holiday rentals.
On Friday, Jéssica de León, the Canary Islands’ Councillor for Tourism and Employment, stated that the decision to impose moratoriums on the creation of new holiday rentals should be left to the discretion of individual municipalities, rather than being enforced at a regional level.
During a press conference to present updates on the draft bill for the Sustainable Regulation of Tourist Housing, De León clarified that such measures have been initiated by local councils in other parts of Spain, such as Madrid, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, and Seville. She emphasized that local governments in the Canary Islands should also be the ones to decide on this issue.
“We leave it to the discretion of the municipalities, who know the current percentage of holiday rentals affecting each local area,” said De León. She added that the regional government is not in favour of imposing a blanket moratorium on the “green islands” (La Palma, La Gomera, and El Hierro) that would equate them with more developed islands like Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Lanzarote, or Fuerteventura.
Furthermore, De León noted that there is currently no “call effect” in terms of registering holiday rentals in the archipelago following the announcement of this new regulation. She stressed that the spirit of the law has not changed, meaning that once approved, “no new declarations of responsibility will be accepted until municipalities have completed their planning,” as stipulated by the regulation.
Until the new law is approved, municipalities can use the existing regulations to “suspend these uses or declarations of responsibility” and reauthorize them when they develop a provisional ordinance to govern these activities within their respective jurisdictions.
“The change is that when the law comes into force, it will be the government that imposes the regulation for the mayors, and they will re-enable the activity once they decide where, how many, and what types of holiday rentals they want in their municipalities,” De León explained.
She also emphasized that the proposed law would not grant new powers to the municipalities but would clarify the existing distribution of authority in the Canary Islands, which the current decree left somewhat ambiguous.
