Holiday rental licences

Who makes the rules

Letting a whole home to tourists for short stays is a regulated business in the Balearic Islands. The main law is the Balearic Tourism Law, Law 8/2012, which has been amended many times since 2017. The Balearic Parliament passes the law, and the Govern (the regional government) can also change it by urgent decree-law. The Consell de Mallorca (the island council) keeps the tourism register, sells tourist places through its CBAT body, inspects and fines. Zones where holiday letting is allowed are set through island and town planning, and Palma city council draws its own. Town halls certify whether a home is in an allowed zone. National law adds guest registration with the police and the rules for communities of owners. Tax on the rental income is separate: see Taxes for owners.

ETV

Short for estancia turística en vivienda: a tourist stay in a home. In everyday speech this registration is called the holiday rental licence.

ETVPL

An ETV in a home that belongs to a community of owners (propiedad horizontal) or a building of two or more homes sharing access or common parts. Its registration and places last five years and must be renewed.

ETV60

Letting your own main home to tourists for up to 60 days a year. Only for private individuals who actually live there.

DRIAT

Declaración responsable de inicio de actividad turística: the sworn declaration that starts a tourist activity. Filing it, with the required documents, is how a home gets registered.

Plaza turística

A tourist place: the right to accommodate one guest. A home can only be let for as many places as it has acquired, and never more than its habitability certificate allows.

Zona apta

A zone declared suitable for holiday letting. The town hall issues a certificate saying whether a home is in one, for each type of letting.

Cédula de habitabilidad

The Balearic habitability certificate. It confirms a home is fit to live in and states how many people it can hold.

CBAT

Consorci Borsa d’Allotjaments Turístics: the Consell de Mallorca body that manages and sells tourist places.

Bolsa de plazas

The pool of tourist places. In Mallorca it now holds only places released when other registrations are cancelled.

Vivienda turística de vacaciones

An older type of holiday-let registration for houses, granted under earlier law. These still appear in the same register.

Which homes can get a new registration in 2026

The biggest recent change is Decree-law 4/2025 of 11 April 2025, in force since 16 April 2025 and validated by the Balearic Parliament in May 2025. It stopped new holiday-let registrations for any home in a community of owners anywhere in the Balearics, except terraced and semi-detached houses. Law 4/2026, in force since 14 June 2026, added a third exception: detached houses that share a plot with other buildings. Letting your own main home for up to 60 days a year is not affected by the ban.

The home itself must also meet the conditions in articles 50 and 52 of Law 8/2012:

• A habitability certificate in force (or an occupation licence stating the number of places). You can let up to that number of places, with one bathroom for every four places.
• At least five years old, with private residential use during that time, shown by the deed of new building, the first-occupation licence or a town hall certificate.
• A town hall certificate that the home is in an approved zone for the type of letting you want.
• Not on protected rustic land, unless the island plan says otherwise. See Buying a finca.
• An energy rating of at least F if built before 2008, or D if built from 2008.
• Individual water meters (where supplied from the public network) and individual electricity or gas meters.
• Civil liability insurance covering guests and, in a community, damage guests cause to the community.
• Never subsidised or price-controlled housing, and no final sanction for a serious or very serious planning breach that has not been put right.
• Stays by days or weeks, never longer than a month (30 nights), and the whole home only, not room by room.

Tourist places, the island cap and the moratorium

Every registration needs tourist places. Under article 5 of Law 8/2012, until an island plan sets a figure, the island’s ceiling is the legal places that exist plus those in the pools, so new places can only appear when others disappear. Since 11 February 2022 (Decree-law 3/2022, later Law 3/2022 of 15 June 2022), Mallorca has suspended both sales of places from the pools and swaps of places between private owners, with some exceptions. The suspension lasts until the island’s tourist carrying capacity is assessed in an island plan, or the Consell de Mallorca’s plenary approves a ceiling based on a carrying-capacity study.

There are three ways round it. An owner who voluntarily cancels a registration whose places were bought permanently can sell those places to someone else. The buyer of the places has three months from the cancellation to show proof of purchase and six months to register a home with them. An owner can also move places from one of their homes to another, with no more places than before. And Decree-law 4/2025 created temporary pools fed only by cancelled registrations, so the total does not grow. When it passed that decree, the Govern counted about 160,000 tourist places in homes across the islands, for about 1.24 million residents.

1. 1

   Rules published

   The CBAT approved the rules for its temporary pool on 11 March 2026 (published in the Balearic official gazette, BOIB no. 33, 14 March 2026). They replaced a first-come, first-served system after the September 2025 call for 654 places could not be resolved because of technical problems.

2. 2

   Who can apply

   Only owners or usufructuaries (people with a life interest) of the home, with a land registry extract proving title. One application per property and one per person.

3. 3

   The March 2026 call

   1,069 places were offered. Online applications opened on 23 March 2026 (BOIB no. 35, 19 March 2026) and the deadline was extended from 30 March to 8 April 2026 (BOIB no. 36, 21 March 2026).

4. 4

   Lottery

   Admitted applications are numbered and a public draw before an official picks the starting number. Places are then allocated in order, and the rest form a waiting list valid for six months from the draw.

5. 5

   Payment and zone certificate

   Successful applicants pay the price and must provide the town hall’s zone certificate, or lose the places to the waiting list.

6. 6

   Registration

   The owner then has three months from the places certificate to file the DRIAT with the Consell de Mallorca, or the places go back to the pool with no refund. Places bought from the pool cannot be passed to anyone else for five years.

Palma’s own rules

Palma city council draws its own holiday-letting zones, and before 2026 it already barred new holiday lets in flats. On 28 May 2026 the full council gave final approval to a change to its 2023 General Plan, which it had initially approved on 26 February 2026. It was published in the Balearic official gazette on 27 June 2026 (BOIB no. 81). The whole municipality is now a single zone where holiday letting in homes is not allowed, including detached and semi-detached houses. The published decision says this removes the 374 new places the plan had allowed (231 in the city and 143 on rustic land), prevents the renewal of registrations that are not permanent, and stops existing places being moved to another home in Palma. Existing permanent registrations can carry on.

Buying a home that already has a licence

Under article 88 of Law 8/2012, tourist places stay attached to the property until the registration is cancelled. A sale does not cancel it, but the change of holder must be notified to the Consell de Mallorca, and failing to do so is a minor offence. If the home has a final fine from the tourism authority, the change of holder cannot be processed until the debt is paid.

An ETVPL registration lasts five years and must be renewed in the month before it expires, with a new CBAT certificate for the places, which is only possible if the home and the zone still meet the rules. Miss that and the registration ends and the places go back to the pool. The April 2025 ban on homes in a community of owners stops new registrations; it does not cancel ones already in place, but ask the Consell or your lawyer to confirm that a flat’s five-year registration can be renewed before relying on it. An ETV60 depends on the holder living there, so it does not carry on for a buyer who will not. And a registration can be cancelled after three years in a row without letting.

1. 1

   Get the number

   Ask for the registration number and check it in the Consell de Mallorca’s register of tourist homes, published as open data, which lists the type of building, municipality, date and number of places.

2. 2

   Ask for the papers

   Ask for the DRIAT, the registration decision and the places certificate. Check the holder, the address and the number of places.

3. 3

   Check the type and expiry

   Find out whether the places are permanent or five-year places, and when any five-year term ends. In Palma, a five-year term can no longer be renewed.

4. 4

   Check the house matches

   The habitability certificate, the actual bedrooms and the registered places should agree, and the building should be legal. See Surveys and checks.

5. 5

   Check the community

   For a home in a community of owners, read the statutes and get the certificate of the owners’ approval.

6. 6

   Check activity and debts

   Ask for tourist tax receipts and evidence of letting in the last three years, and ask whether any inspection or fine is open.

7. 7

   Protect yourself in the contract

   Ask your lawyer whether to make the licence a condition of the purchase and how the change of holder will be filed after completion. See Choosing a lawyer.

Running a holiday let: registers, guests and tax

Balearic registration number. Every advert must show it. Booking platforms that list homes without a registration or without the number commit a very serious offence.

National register. Royal Decree 1312/2024 created a national single rental register, applied from 1 July 2025, that gave each short-term let a number needed for online platforms. The Supreme Court annulled that registration procedure, and the duty to register through the Land Registry to get the number, in a judgment of 19 May 2026 (published in the BOE, the Spanish official gazette, on 8 June 2026), followed by similar rulings on 21 May and 1 June 2026. The national number is no longer required. Platforms must still share booking data with the authorities under EU Regulation 2024/1028, and the Balearic registration still applies.

Guest registration. Under Royal Decree 933/2021, hosts register with the Interior Ministry’s online system (SES.HOSPEDAJES, running since 2 December 2024) before they start, then send booking and guest details within 24 hours of the booking and again within 24 hours of arrival. Every guest aged 14 or over signs the form.

House rules. Since 9 July 2025 (Law 1/2025) the letting contract must expressly ban parties and other events that break basic neighbourhood rules or the community’s statutes. If guests cause such disturbances, the host must require them to leave within 24 hours. Leaving the ban out of the contract is a serious offence.

Community of owners. Since 3 April 2025 the national Horizontal Property Law requires the express prior approval of three fifths of the owners, holding three fifths of the shares, before anyone starts a holiday let in the building. The same majority can raise that home’s share of community costs by up to 20%. Registered lets running before that date may continue.

Fines and enforcement

Decree-law 4/2025 raised tourism fines by about 25% from 16 April 2025. Owners, the people who market the home and tenants of the property can all be held responsible. Platforms can also be fined. Fines can be raised up to three times the price of the stays involved, so that breaking the rules never pays.

Fines connected with holiday letting are cut by 80% if the owner admits responsibility and hands the home over for social or price-limited rent for at least five years, or by 60% if it goes into a public affordable-rent scheme for at least seven years. The Consell can also order unlicensed letting to stop immediately. The Govern’s tourist containment website links to each island council’s channel for reporting illegal letting.

Alternatives: long-term and seasonal letting

Without a registration you can still let a home as a normal residence under the national Urban Leases Law (LAU). The tenant can stay for at least five years, or seven if the landlord is a company. See Renting long-term for how these contracts work.

Seasonal or temporary lets are where the rules are moving fastest. Balearic law limits a tourist stay in a home to 30 nights, and presumes a let is touristic if it is short, ready to move into and you cannot show another purpose. Nationally, Royal Decree-law 29/2026 of 6 October 2026, in force since 8 October 2026, says a temporary let needs a real, provable reason why the tenant is away from their main home, must last more than 31 days and generally no more than 12 months. Without such a reason it is treated as an ordinary residential lease. When we checked on 25 October 2026, it had not yet been validated by Congress. An earlier version, Royal Decree-law 26/2026, was repealed on 2 October 2026 after Congress voted against it, and its changes to the leases law were undone. The same would happen to these rules if Congress rejects the new decree-law.

Recent changes at a glance

Questions buyers ask