Junta issues first notifications to cancel tourist licences for hundreds of flats in Malaga

The owners of hundreds of tourist properties in Malaga that do not have independent access and utility supplies within the buildings where they are located have started to receive notifications from the Junta de Andalucía’s tourism department in Malaga. These missives are informing them that they will be removed from the register of tourist accommodation because they do not comply with the instruction approved last June by Malaga city council to limit this type of accommodation.

This has been confirmed to SUR by the aforementioned department. Upon receipt of these notifications, the owners of the flats have 10 working days (excluding weekends and public holidays) to contest this measure. Their counter-claims will be responded to by Tourism after consultation with the city council. This follows the council’s request this summer for the regional government to cancel 1,120 tourist licences for flats that have no independent entrance nor supplies. However, once Tourism finally agrees to the cancellation, the owners will have one month to lodge a final appeal to the head of tourism before possibly opting to go to court to oppose this action by the Junta.

Following the arrival of the first of such notifications to cancel licences, the Andalusian association of holiday rental professionals (AVVA-Pro) is receiving hundreds of queries every day to their free legal advice service, which it has made available to any members needing to oppose these cancellations supported by city hall. It seems clear that a long legal battle on this matter has only just begun.

Martiricos towers

Among the owners who are seeking legal advice for their counterclaims are the owners of the many tourist properties in Martiricos towers in Malaga city. According to data compiled by this newspaper, obtained from the official tourism register of the Junta de Andalucía, a total of 141 tourist flats are registered in these two buildings. To be exact, in the south tower some 111 tourist flats are registered, representing 44% of the 252 flats in the building. In the north tower, 30 out of a total of 198 flats were registered as tourist lets, located above the two hotel businesses that are also housed in this tower. The 141 tourist properties account for 31% of the total number of residential units in the two buildings.

Of these, 124 must be deregistered by the Junta’s tourism department because they were registered after 22 February. On that day, the Andalusian decree came into force that modifies the regulation of tourist flats and expressly allows local councils to limit them further. On 10 June Malaga’s mayor Francisco de la Torre announced an instruction from the council’s urban planning department that only those flats with access and supplies (electricity, water, telephone, etc.) that are independent from the rest of the building in which they are located can be registered as tourist flats. Furthermore, he made it clear that this ruling was to be backdated for, and applied to, those tourist flats that had been registered after the entry into force of the new decree on 22 February.

The Junta’s tourism department has therefore already begun to issue notifications of intent to cancel these licences. However, in view of the deadlines established to resolve each of these cancellation cases, the withdrawal of these dwellings from the tourism register will not be immediate. Moreover, in some cases, it could lead to legal proceedings and drag on even longer.

Malaga city council sent the Junta an initial list of 1,120 tourist flats that should be removed from the register for not meeting the requirements for independent access and supplies. This list includes the holiday rental properties in Martiricos towers, a residential complex now notorious for the problems of coexistence that have arisen between the residents of these upmarket buildings and the many tourists that pass through those doors.

This post was originally published on here