Castelldefels suspends new tourist accommodation licenses for one year

The City Council of Castelldefels has suspended, for a maximum of one year, the granting of any license or enabling title intended for the installation or expansion of tourist establishments throughout the municipality. The decision was adopted by the Local Governing Board in the session of October 16, 2026, and was made public in the Official Gazette of the Province of Barcelona on October 19, 2026, with the official reference CVE 202610155087 (pp. 1-2). The agreement bears the signature of the mayor, Manuel Reyes López.

The suspension is based on article 73.1 of the Recast Text of the Urban Planning Law, approved by Legislative Decree 1/2010, of August 3, and is grounded in the technical and legal reports issued on October 15, 2026, incorporated into the file for motivation purposes. The council thus applies the municipal power to halt licenses while the urban planning regime of the activity is defined, and communicates this in compliance with article 73.3 of the same regulation.

Six affected accommodation modalities

The suspension covers all modalities regulated by Decree 75/2020, of August 4, on tourism in Catalonia:

• Hotel establishments: hotels, apartment hotels, and hostels or guesthouses.
• Tourist apartments.
• Tourist use dwellings.
• Shared homes.
• Outdoor accommodations: campsites, motorhome reception areas, and assimilated modalities.
• Singular accommodations.

The scope of application is the entire municipal district, delimited in the map attached as an annex to the agreement. An authentic copy of this map can be consulted via the link 16342604656376312113 appearing in the published text, as provided for in article 8.5 of Legislative Decree 1/2010.

One year of validity and exclusions for pending files

The maximum term of the suspension is one year starting from the publication in the provincial gazette. The measure does not only affect licenses strictly speaking: it also includes new requests for building permits (new construction, expansion, change of use, or major rehabilitation), prior notifications of works, and activity notifications that generate new tourist accommodation places, as well as the regularization of existing places that do not have the mandatory license.

However, the agreement establishes explicit exclusions to avoid harming consolidated situations:

• Licenses granted and in force before the suspension came into effect.
• Legally extended licenses.
• Actions covered by a valid urban planning certificate that has expressly recognized their viability.
• Files that are formally being processed prior to the entry into force of the measure.
• Notifications to start, expand, modify, or install an activity that already possesses the mandatory municipal authorization to execute the conditioning works.

Publication and appeal process

The Castelldefels City Council publishes the agreement in the Official Gazette of the Province and on the electronic notice board e-tauler. An administrative contentious appeal may be filed against the agreement of the Local Government Board, which concludes the administrative route, before the Administrative Contentious Section of the Court of First Instance of Barcelona within two months from the day following its publication.

The measure directly affects real estate developers, homeowners, and the local tourism sector as a whole, who will not be able to obtain enabling titles to expand or open new accommodation places in the city for the next twelve months. The impact is particularly relevant in a coastal municipality with strong tourism pressure, where the freeze on new places conditions the planning of hotel and tourist rental investments until the council resolves the applicable urban planning framework.

Source: Official Gazette of the Province of Barcelona, October 19, 2026, Local Administration, pp. 1-2 (official reference: CVE 202610155087).