Spanish government’s clampdown comes as anti-tourism feeling grows - SOPA Images/Getty

More than 65,000 Airbnb listings in Spain are to be shut down amid a row over runaway house prices in the country.

The Left-wing Spanish government has come under increasing pressure to tame a surge in house prices and rents, which have doubled in less than a decade in some tourism hotspots.

Airbnb listings have been partly blamed for swallowing up the housing stock in cities such as Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia.

Mass protests over excessive tourism across Spain over the past two years have restarted ahead of this summer.

Airbnb has now been ordered by consumer affairs minister Pablo Bustinduy to block thousands of listings on the grounds that they breach accommodation regulations.

Many of the holiday rentals do not include a licence number or specify whether the owner was an individual or a company, the consumer rights ministry said.

Mr Bustinduy said the properties had “violated various norms regarding housing for tourist use”.

“No more excuses. Enough with protecting those who make a business out of the right to housing in our country,” he told reporters on Monday.

Airbnb has announced it will appeal the decision, stressing that “no evidence of rule-breaking by hosts has been put forward” by the government.

According to official data, there are 321,000 homes with holiday rental licences in Spain – 15pc more than in 2020.

It is the world’s second most popular tourist destination, attracting 94 million overseas visitors last year. The tourism sector accounts for 12pc of the country’s GDP.

Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez previously said “there are too many Airbnbs and not enough homes”, while Barcelona’s mayor has pledged a total ban on tourism rentals by 2028.

In January, Mr Sánchez blamed foreign buyers for Spain’s housing crisis and threatened to increase sales tax on home purchases for non-EU citizens by up to 100pc.

While current British residents in Spain would be unaffected by the proposals, new buyers relocating for a life in the Mediterranean sun could soon face double taxation.

It is one of a series of measures launched to tackle the country’s housing crisis. Seville’s city hall, for example, ruled that water can be cut off to a property that is unlicensed after rent prices surged in the Andalusian capital.

Anti-tourism protests are deterring British holidaymakers from going to Spain, according to Steve Heapy, the chief executive of Jet2.

He said there was a perception among some people that overseas visitors were not welcome in the country.

Last May, about 10,000 people marched in Palma, Majorca’s capital city, holding posters that read “SOS residents” and “Enough mass tourism”. Similar demonstrations have featured banners reading “Tourists go home”.

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Airbnb said it would contest the government’s order to strip 66,000 holiday rentals of their accommodation listing.

A spokesman said: “The root cause of the affordable housing crisis in Spain is a lack of supply to meet demand.

“The solution is to build more homes – anything else is a distraction.

“Governments across the world are seeing that regulating Airbnb does not alleviate housing concerns or return homes to the market – it only hurts local families who rely on hosting to afford their homes and rising costs.”

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