Seville tried to crack down on tourist flats

MADRID – Like many other popular Spanish cities, Seville has sought to clamp down on tourist flats as locals complain of surging house prices as a result of overtourism.

However, the city’s strict rules are not functioning as intended.

José Luis Sanz, the mayor of Seville, banned tourist flats in buildings where local families were also living to stop holidaymakers disturbing residents.

But it would appear that they do not apply to some businesses, such as Scalpers, a fashion brand.

Six tourist apartments will come on the market for British tourists in the heart of the Andalusian capital in previously empty parts of an office building owned by Scalpers, a Spanish fashion company that started out in Seville.

The granting of these licences to a company is an indication of how big business is cashing in on a boom in tourism in Spain, which accounts for 12 per cent of GDP.

In Seville, more than 10 per cent of housing has been converted from long-term housing for residents to tourists flats for the 3.5 million visitors last year, according to the city council.

Protests were staged across the country this month against overtourism, which activists blame for a shortage of affordable housing for locals.

The Andalusian regional government, which presides over one of the most popular areas of Spain for British holidaymakers, has launched a series of campaigns to stress the positive side to tourism after a survey found a growing number of mostly younger people saw it as a negative force driving up house prices.

Scalpers was contacted for a comment by The i Paper but has not responded.

Iban Díaz Parra, a professor of geography at the University of Seville, who is an expert in gentrification, said if businesses converted empty offices into tourist flats, it did not deprive local people of affordable housing but it did show the “intense” tourism model of the city. 

He said more tourist flats meant crowded streets, more noise and the “incompatibility of lifestyles between residents and visitors”.

Professor Díaz Parra noted that tourism had also hastened the disappearance of local businesses, which are replaced with franchises. 

He said the same thing was happening with banks, large companies and offices which were being converted into four and five-star hotels.

Last year, the city council said 1,000 tourist flats did not comply with municipal regulations. Sixty-six applications for tourist flats were rejected between January and May.

Mr Sanz said recently that he was considering a fresh crackdown on tourist flats. The present limit is 10 per cent of all housing in the city.

He defended the opening of four or five-star hotels as a way to draw “quality tourism” to the southern Spanish city.

From the Real Alcázar Palace to the imposing tower of the Giralda and its many tapas bars, Seville attracts millions of tourists but is struggling to cope with its popularity.

In 2023, the city brought in a high-tech tourist rationing system using sensors to monitor in real time the number of visitors in the narrow streets of its central Santa Cruz neighbourhood, which holds many of the city’s best-known historic buildings.

Linked to a Wi-Fi system, these feed information back to civic authorities who can close down the central artery of the city for a period until the crowds are cleared by the tourist police.