Court rules Seville council can cut off water supply to illegal tourist flats
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A court in Seville in southern Spain has ruled that the city council is within its rights to cut off the water supply to illegal tourist apartments.
Over the past year the city has disconnected the supply to six illegal apartments. Three owners appealed but the judge, mindful of neighbours’ complaints about noise, accepted the council’s argument that the apartments were not the owners’ residences.
The council believes there are 5,000 illegal apartments in addition to the 10,000 that have been granted licences. Water supply will be restored once the apartments revert to being normal residences.
Since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, Seville (population 700,000) has been receiving about 3.5 million visitors a year, most of them in the small historic centre.
The council has now ruled that the agencies that manage the apartments will be held responsible, given that the owners often live as far away as the US and are difficult to trace.
Although cities with similar problems with tourist apartments such as Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia say they do not plan to follow Seville’s example, all are under pressure from local people to address a phenomenon that is driving up rents, shrinking the rental property market and forcing residents out.
A huge protest against mass tourism in the Canary Islands in April triggered a series of similar demonstrations in Mallorca, Granada, Málaga and Barcelona.
Faced with angry constituents, even conservative local councils that previously dismissed protests as “tourismphobia” have been forced to take action.
