The government’s Ministry of Housing has been busy clearing out Costa Blanca’s unlicensed holiday lets.
It has ordered digital platforms to take down 7,499 adverts for tourist apartments that failed to meet legal requirements.
Alicante province tops the list by some distance, with 4,734 cases struck off.
Within the province, Dénia stands out with 538 withdrawn listings, making it the third-worst-affected town in the region. Just behind Valencia city (731) and Torrevieja (700). Also taking a hit were Alicante city (528) and Benidorm (476).
All the locations are popular with holidaymakers and therefore prime ground for unlicensed rentals.
According to the Ministry, these were properties that had applied for a registration code since July but didn’t make the cut. Without the code, the applications were marked as revoked. Platforms are now obliged to remove the adverts. Some of these flats were popping up on more than one website, so the clean-up could be wider than the numbers suggest.
Costa Blanca’s unlicensed holiday lets: Digital One-Stop Shop
This crackdown is part of the Digital One-Stop Shop, launched earlier this year. Spain is the first country in Europe to roll out such a system. The system creates a single register for short-term rentals that can be cross-checked against online listings. The aim is to spot those without a valid registration code and boot them off the market.
Since January, more than 336,000 applications have gone through the system nationwide, nearly four out of five of them for tourist lets. Of those, over 53,000 have already been rejected across Spain.
In the Valencian Community, Alicante province leads the way with its 4,734 revoked listings, followed by Valencia with 1,754 and Castellón with 1,011.
Among the provincial capitals, Valencia city tops the chart with 731 removals, Alicante city follows with 528, and Castellón city trails behind with just 45.
