Spain's Supreme Court annuls national tourist rental register, returns control to regions

A ruling that reshapes the division of powers

The Supreme Court, in a ruling dated 19 May 2026 (number 620/2026, STS 2148/2026), has partially upheld the appeal presented by the Valencian Government and has invalidated the state procedure that required tourist and seasonal flats to be registered in a single national register. According to Garrigues, the judges considered that the State did not have sufficient legal authority to impose this mechanism, so the regulation and supervision of this type of rental returns to the hands of the autonomous communities.

The legal arguments

The same source explains that neither the State's authority over public registers nor that relating to the bases of economic planning justified the creation of this register. Nor did it require it, states Garrigues, European Regulation 2024/1028, which calls for reliable information on short-term rentals but does not impose a single national register.

A register that had been operating for eleven months

The annulled register had come into force on 1 July 2025, under Royal Decree 1312/2024, of 23 December. Its operation meant that any owner had to have an NRUA number to be able to publish their property on platforms such as Airbnb or Booking, according to Chekin. According to idealista data, by the end of 2025, 412,253 registration applications had been processed, 78% for tourist rental and the remaining 22% for seasonal lets.

The market nationally and in the comarca

idealista notes that, according to the INE, in November 2025 there were 329,764 active tourist properties on digital platforms, nearly 47,000 fewer than twelve months earlier. In Dénia, one of the municipalities with the highest concentration of this type of accommodation in the Valencian Community, 4,863 tourist properties were registered in September 2025, although CCOO estimates that the real number could be close to 6,808.

Xàbia waiting to lift its moratorium

In Xàbia, the moratorium approved in 2024 on new tourist property licences remains in force. The Town Council had announced its intention to lift it by establishing maximum limits per zone, a plan that could now be affected by the new division of powers. For now, according to idealista, other communities such as Andalucía and the Canary Islands are also said to have announced challenges to the state register, although this has not been confirmed. It also remains to be clarified which parts of Royal Decree 1312/2024 remain in force and whether the Government is preparing a regulation to replace the annulled register.