According to the Spanish Consumer Affairs Ministry, some 65,000 adverts breached consumer protection rules. The fine, which is said to be final, amounts to six times the profit made by Airbnb on the listings.
On Monday, 15 December 2025, the Spanish government fined US-based holiday accommodation platform Airbnb €64 million. The amount of the fine is explained by the large number of properties concerned, amounting to no less than 65,122 Airbnb listings.
According to the Consumer Affairs Ministry, the listings violated Spanish consumer protection rules in multiple ways – for example, some of the properties did not have licences, while others had licence numbers not matching the official registers. Many are said to have been located in regions with short-term rental restrictions or requiring explicit authorisation.
The Ministry specified that properties advertised in Spain need to meet local and regional housing rules and that it is up to rental platforms such as Airbnb to make sure the listings are compliant. Once an anomaly is discovered, the listing should be taken down immediately, while Airbnb allegedly takes too long to do so.
“There are thousands of families who are living on the edge due to housing, while a few get rich with business models that expel people from their homes”, Spain’s consumer rights minister Pablo Bustinduy said in a statement, explaining that every non-compliant listing listed for too long reduces the number of properties available to locals.
Global action
The amount of the penalty represents six times the profits made by Airbnb between the moment the company was warned by authorities about its offending listings and the moment they were taken down. While the Consumer Affairs Ministry said the fine was final, Airbnb still intends to challenge the decision in court, according to the British news outlet BBC.
The fine imposed on Airbnb is Spain’s latest way of tackling overtourism. Protests against holiday lets organised by locals, including water pistol attacks, made international headlines at the start of the year. In July 2025, the government already forced Booking.com to take down some 4,000 non-compliant listings in an attempt to tackle the rising number of short-term rentals, which are limiting the number of accommodations that are available to locals, thus putting a strain on the well-being of the country. More locally, Barcelona has decided to phase out all tourist apartments by 2028.
Across the globe, actions taken against Airbnb are becoming increasingly common. Cities such as New York, Berlin, Paris, and San Francisco have already heavily restricted their policy towards the short-term rental platform.
