Crisis in Majorca as 99% 'illegal' holiday lets actually turn out to be legal

Last month, Spanish officials demanded that accommodation websites remove thousands of illegal holiday lets in the Balearics. However, in a major U-turn, the Council of Majorca claims that 99% of these properties are, in fact, legal. In September, Spain's Housing Ministry said 2,373 tourist apartments in the Balearics that were applied for have not been granted because they did not meet legal requirements.

This accounts for 1,341 holiday lets in the holiday hotspot of Majorca. Accommodation sites such as Booking.com and Airbnb-which are popular with Brits-were instructed to remove adverts for these properties. If they failed to do so, they risked being slapped with a huge fine. But the council says only 12 are illegal.

They insist these holiday lets are legal as they have permits. The problem is that they lack one or both of the two documents that the decree requires to be submitted with the application: the Single Registry Code and its cadastral reference, Majorca Daily Bulletin reports.

Obtaining these documents, the council says, involves minor administrative procedures.

Majorca's tourism department claims the holiday rental sector is "criminalised" when it is in fact ticking all the boxes it needs to operate legally.

The council's findings echo those of the Habtur association for holiday rentals which voiced concerns last month that the vast majority of the lets were legal.

The twelve cases the Council has identified are now subject to sanctioning procedures.

Earlier this year, the implementation of a single registry for temporary accommodation began. Since it began operating, it has received a total of 336,497 applications across Spain, of which 264,998 correspond to holiday rentals. Of these, an astonishing 53,786 have been revoked.

It comes after Spain's prime minister, Pedro Sanchez announced plans to remove 53,000 tourist apartments from rental platforms across the country, including a whopping 6,000 in the Malaga province alone, according to The Olive Press.

Mr Sanchez declared that his government had detected "thousands of irregularities" in properties listed as holiday rentals.