Madrid City Council has overreacted in the data provided on its campaign of fines against illegal tourist apartments. The latest report from the Activities Agency reveals that the number of sanctions received by owners of Residences for Tourist Use (VUT) without municipal authorization to carry out this activity is much lower than what the Government of Almeida had indicated until here.
The mayor assured last July: “We have imposed more than 170 sanctions worth 30,000 euros” since April, a figure that his team later specified at 176. However, the aforementioned municipal management report, to which This newspaper had access, includes only 69 sanction procedures during the first nine months of the year for this type of tourist business “for the implementation and development of urban use incompatible with town planning” .
Of the total fines imposed, only in 16 cases did the companies denounced decide to take advantage of the reductions provided for rapid payment (between 20% and 40%), so it is likely that a good part of the others appealed the sanctions and These are not yet firm. The total amount claimed by the municipality amounts to 1,890,063 euros, according to the aforementioned report.
The sanctions of 30,001 euros are the first in a series of fines that have been increased in Madrid since last spring, when Almeida’s team decided to significantly increase the amount to try to discourage the opening of illegal tourist apartments, which amounted to more than 12,000. domain. Previously, sanctions of 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 euros were imposed, procedures which continued to be processed by the Activities Agency (ADA) and which so far this year have reached an additional 51 VUT.
Fewer VUTs closed than announced
Although Madrid City Hall is currently working on a law to facilitate the reduction of the number of tourist apartments without permits, its efforts are currently focused on closing those that already exist, sending the message to owners of pirate VUTs that it There is “zero tolerance with these types of illegal apartments,” Almeida said last summer. “We have demonstrated this by already processing all these files and imposing more than one hundred and seventy sanctions (…). “We need to put an end to illegality in the city now.”
The message was reinforced in August by the town planning delegate himself, responsible for the Agency for Activities and Inspection Campaigns, assuring that thanks to the measures adopted, “nearly 500” VUTs had been closed during of the last 18 months. The truth is that this figure seems far from reality, because after the fines and the inspection campaigns carried out, the Town Hall itself recognizes that 221 illegal tourist residences have resumed their residential activity this year after their owners received the threat a fine from the Town Hall. , which gives a first warning before starting the procedures for imposing financial fines.
What has increased during this period from January to September are the complaints that arrive against tourist apartments, both from neighbors (692 compared to 431 in the same section of the year 2023) and from the municipal police and other areas. the consistory (251 against 83). Following these complaints, the Agency’s inspection detected 448 VUTs, most of them illegal.
Thanks to this action, 289 files were opened concerning 312 households. At the same time, these teams ordered the closure of 356 tourist accommodations, some of which had files opened since last year.
No more listings on Airbnb despite the moratorium
At the same time as the increase in the amount of fines, Madrid City Hall has decreed the cessation of the granting of VUT licenses. He did so while dealing with new regulations that will prevent it from opening in homeowner communities with long-term residents. His intention is to initially approve it in two weeks and to apply it definitively before the summer.
But the moratorium and fines do not seem to intimidate some owners who rent tourist apartments without a permit: since April, there have been a thousand additional apartment listings on Airbnb, even though their number legally cannot increase.
From Más Madrid, who attended the meeting of the ADA Directing Council this Wednesday, they indicate that the figure of 69 fines is lower than those imposed last year, despite the fact that the government team “assured us that it had strengthened the inspection service.” on ten additional people. His advisor José Luis Nieto adds, in statements to this newspaper: “We know that everything Almeida sells is smoke, but that does not mean that we have stopped being shocked when we discover that this government is lying more than he talks and his measures and sanctions are false. “Almeida, where does the information come from that the City Council imposed 176 fines between April and July of this year, when they do not even reach 70?”, he adds.
Nieto explains that “the Activities Agency’s own report from January to September of this year revealed the lies of the municipal government about its policy with VUT and adds that “Almeida would only have managed to make them stop practicing illegally the 197 VUT, despite the fact that the complaints recorded have continued to grow: from 514 in 2023 to 943 in 2024”, this is why it demands “immediate explanations from the mayor and the town planning delegate, who lied without the slightest shame, to “all of us”. citizens. »
