Tourist flat owners are striking back! Valencia tourist apartments ban in Ciutat Vella is facing a legal showdown as property groups refuse to back down
In a sensational twist, the battle over tourist flats in València’s historic heart has erupted into a full-blown legal showdown! The powerful Association of Tourist Housing (Aptur CV) has unleashed a legal barrage against Valencia tourist apartments ban, the city’s audacious move to slam the door on new tourist accommodations in the cherished enclaves of El Carme, La Seu, El Mercat, and parts of La Xerea.
This legal tempest was ignited by the City Council’s daring overhaul of the Ciutat Vella Special Plan (PEC) last September, which resulted in Valencia tourist apartments ban in the Old City Centre. In a dramatic council meeting, the People’s Party (PP), Vox, and the Socialist Party (PSPV) joined forces to greenlight a sweeping ban on tourist flats in these historic quarters. Compromís, notably, abstained from the vote, adding fuel to the political firestorm.
The backdrop to this courtroom drama is a seismic ruling from Spain’s Supreme Court, which obliterated the previous 2020 regulations that sought to control tourist rentals. The court’s gavel came down hard, declaring the restrictions on ‘occasional’ tourist housing—those rented by resident owners for up to 60 days a year with community approval—void due to flimsy justifications.
This decision flung open the gates for tourist apartments to sprout once more, provided they nestled on ground or first floors beneath residential units.
In a bold counteroffensive, the City Council retaliated with an ironclad prohibition, aiming to “render impossible” the conversion of homes into transient tourist havens in the most residential zones. However, they left a loophole, permitting tourist accommodations in exclusive-use buildings in the more commercial fringes of the old town.
This manoeuvre, architected by the socialist councillor and executed by his successor, the popular Juan Giner, under the new PP and Vox regime led by María José Catalá, has now been thrust into the legal coliseum.
Aptur CV, the gladiators of the tourist housing sector, view this move as a cunning ploy to sidestep the Supreme Court’s decree and are charging forward to ensure the ruling is enforced.
With the new regulations taking effect in January, Aptur CV sounded the war drums, vowing to challenge the edict in court—a promise they’ve now spectacularly fulfilled. The legal saga unfolds as the chamber demands the City Council unveil the municipal dossier, paving the way for the association to unleash their full legal arsenal.
The Territorial Commission of Urban Planning of the Valencian Generalitat has thrown its weight behind the Valencia tourist apartments ban, and City Council’s crusade, asserting that the modification “justifies the public interest” by steering tourism towards “sustainable territorial guidelines” and championing “urban rehabilitation” and “residential recovery.”
The commission’s endorsement aims to “curtail gentrification” and “enhance neighbourhood quality,” leading to the definitive approval of the old town’s urban regulations.
Yet, the plot thickens! The current edict exempts the Sant Francesc neighbourhood and a slice of La Xerea, encompassing the illustrious Patriarch Square and the so-called ‘golden mile’ of the city—zones the council deems already commercialised. In these territories, new hotels and tourist flats in exclusive blocks were always part of the plan. Initially, a 150-meter buffer between tourist flat blocks was on the table, but that restriction vanished in the final script.
In Sant Francesc, a melting pot of mixed-use edifices blending residential spaces with commercial ventures like offices, the plan dictates that tertiary uses can’t gobble up more than half of a plot’s built space. This constraint extends its reach to hotel enterprises, which must always perch above other tertiary uses and below residential quarters.
In this predominantly commercial theatre, the most exclusive tertiary zone emerges—a realm where new tourist flats are banished, but hotels and their kin can set up shop, provided they occupy buildings of singular use. They can also coexist in edifices shared with other tertiary pursuits, such as offices, shops, or entertainment venues, but always reigning above them. If they share the same floor, the hotel must boast its own grand entrance from the street.
As the sides clash in the courts, the fate of València’s historic quarters hangs in the balance, with the outcome set to ripple through the city’s tourism and housing landscape for years to come. As it stands now, Valencia tourist apartments ban is still something that might or might not happen in the future.
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© Owners Wage Legal War Against Valencia Tourist Apartments Ban! – valenciaproperty.es
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