The Spanish Government has fined Airbnb €64 million for a series of breaches, including listing unlicensed properties on its platform.
In explaining the sanction, the minister for social and consumer rights, Pablo Bustinduy, said that “there cannot be business models that are built on the margins of the law”. The fine is estimated to be worth six times the tourist accommodation platform made from the unlawful listings.
Bustinduy said that Airbnb was being punished for several specific infractions. They included advertising properties that did not have valid licenses and failing to provide information on the legal status of property owners. The properties had also failed to provide data allowing the ministry to carry out inspections, he said.
“We have said from the beginning of this legislature that in this ministry we will defend the rights of consumers in each and every economic area, regardless of how powerful any company may be which is implicated in abusive or fraudulent practices,” Bustinduy said.
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The fine comes after the government had warned Airbnb in 2024 that around 65,000 listings of properties on its site breached tourism industry norms. A Madrid court agreed and the company was eventually forced to remove the listings in question in July.
This is the second-biggest fine a Spanish consumer authority has handed to a company. In 2024, the same ministry fined Ryanair €108 million for practices such as charging travellers extra for hand luggage.
In a statement, Airbnb said it planned to challenge the sanction in court and that it was “confident that the Ministry of Consumer Affairs’ actions are contrary to applicable regulations in Spain”.
Many in Spain believe that tourist apartments are exacerbating Spain’s housing crisis, which has seen spiralling rentals, particularly in larger towns and cities. Airbnb has become one of the targets of a backlash against mass tourism which has seen large street protests in destinations like the Canary and Balearic Islands and Barcelona over the last two summers.
Spain is the world’s second-biggest destination for foreign tourists, after France, with 94 million visitors last year and tourism is seen as a big cause of the country’s steady economic growth in recent years. However, earlier this year, the socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said there were “too many Airbnbs and not enough homes”.
Other political leaders have taken a similar stance and Barcelona city hall has announced plans to eliminate the city’s 10,000 or so registered short-term holiday rentals by the end of 2028.
However, in Ibiza and Murcia they have taken an approach based more on co-operation: Airbnb has committed to helping ensure that existing regulations are obeyed by hosts of properties.
