Photo Credit; Getty Images
Amidst a national housing crisis, Spain's leftist government on Monday levied a fine exceeding 64 million euros ($75 million) against Airbnb for publishing listings of prohibited rental properties. The consumer affairs ministry confirmed the finality of the fine, ordering the US holiday-rental platform to "correct the violations by deleting illegal content" to comply with regulations.
The fine is equivalent to six times the illegal profit made by Airbnb between the time the company was warned about the offending adverts and before they were taken down, the ministry added.
The ministry said 65,122 adverts on Airbnb breached consumer rules, including the promotion of properties without a licence or those whose licence number did not match with data in registers.
A tourism boom has driven the buoyant Spanish economy but fuelled local concern about increasingly scarce and unaffordable housing, a top priority for the minority coalition government. The world's second most-visited country hosted a record 94 million foreign tourists in 2024 and is on course to surpass that figure this year.
But residents of hotspots such as Barcelona blame short-term rentals for the housing crisis and changing their neighbourhoods.
In June, the consumer rights ministry also ordered online accommodation giant Booking.com to take down more than 4,000 illegal adverts.
"There are thousands of families who are living on the edge due to housing, while a few get rich with business models that expel people from their homes," far-left consumer rights minister Pablo Bustinduy said in the ministry statement.
"We'll prove it as many times as necessary: no company, no matter how big or powerful, is above the law. Even less so when it comes to housing," he added on social network Bluesky.
It also said that some of the properties advertised in the popular tourist destination were banned from being rented.
Globally, several popular tourist cities place heavy restrictions on Airbnb, including Barcelona, New York, Berlin, Paris and even San Francisco, where Airbnb was founded.
