The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) nullified several articles of the Decree 113/2015 of 22 May on short-term rentals on the Canary Islands.
Mr. Pablo Zubicaray, President of FEVITUR, declared that “the judgement issued on the Canary Islands clearly shows that short-term rentals facilitate free competition within the market. In addition to that, companies that carry out this type of activity are key players in the ecosystem of tourist accommodation, which is of great importance to the economic growth of our country”.
Last June, Fevitur filed a contentious-administrative appeal to null the article 3.2 of the above-mentioned decree, by which the regulation on short-term rentals on the Canary Islands was approved. The Autonomous Government of the Islands intended to exclude the following holiday rentals from the scope of the law: “buildings located on tourist land that are within tourist areas or tourist developments, as well as those properties located in tourist developments or mixed tourist/residential developments, according to the definition established by Law 2/2013 of 29 May on renewal and modernization of tourism on the Canary Islands”.
The Court stated that “excluding the holiday rental offer from tourist and mixed-use areas, which is precisely where holiday rentals tend to be located, lacks legal justification in the Law on Tourism on the Canary Islands”.
It is worth stressing that such exclusion would have had serious consequences for thousands of families operating in the holiday home rental sector on the Canary Islands, as the prohibition would have led to a very high percentage of their holiday homes to be declared illegal for being located on this type of lands.
The judgement of the TSJC has also declared that “the regulation violates entrepreneurship freedom by limiting the tourist offer without sufficient justification”.
The article prohibiting home owners from renting out single rooms in their homes has also been nullified as “there are no grounds for requiring a client who only wants to rent one room to take on the cost of renting the entire property”.
Last June, the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid sided with FEVITUR and nullified the article establishing that “short-term rental properties shall not be rented out for periods of less than five days”.