A court in Seville, southern Spain, has ruled that the city administration has the right to cut off water supplies to illegal tourist accommodation.

Last year, the city cut off power to six illegal apartments. Three owners appealed, but the judge, aware of neighbors’ complaints about noise, followed the council’s argument that the apartments were not the owners’ residences.

The Council understands that there are 5,000 illegal dwellings in addition to the 10,000 approved dwellings. Water supplies will be restored once the dwellings are returned to normal residential use.

Since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, Seville (700,000 inhabitants) has welcomed around 3.5 million visitors annually, most of them in the small old town.

The council has now decided that the agencies that manage the apartments will be held responsible, as the owners often live in far-flung areas such as the USA and are difficult to trace.

Cities such as Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, which have similar problems with holiday rentals, say they do not want to follow Seville’s example. But all cities are under pressure from their populations to deal with a phenomenon that is driving up rents, shrinking the rental market and forcing residents to flee.

A major protest against mass tourism in the Canary Islands in April sparked a series of similar demonstrations in Mallorca, Granada, Málaga and Barcelona.

Faced with the anger of their constituents, even conservative local councillors who had previously dismissed the protests as “tourism phobia” were forced to act.

In the Balearic Islands, the ruling conservative Popular Party (PP) felt compelled to set up a cross-party group to rethink the tourism model for the islands. Last year, the island’s 1.2 million inhabitants received almost 18 million visitors.

Valencia, which is jointly governed by the PP and the far-right Vox party, has introduced a moratorium on new licenses for tourist apartments and plans to crack down on illegal housing.

In the capital, Madrid, the PP government has done little to curb the rise in the number of vacation rentals, although an estimated 92 percent of the 13,502 apartments are illegal. The platform Inside Airbnb, which analyzes the vacation rental market, estimates that the actual number of apartments is closer to 25,000.

Estate agent figures released in April show that there were only 8,034 apartments available for rent in Madrid, compared to 14,133 holiday rentals.

Jaume Collboni, the mayor of Barcelona, ​​announced in June that tourist apartments would be de facto banned from 2028 if the licenses for the 10,000 legal apartments were not renewed.

He faces legal challenges from powerful landlords who control much of the market, while housing inspectors, who uncover an average of 300 illegal apartments a month, are fighting a losing battle.

The socialist-led Catalan government, sworn in earlier this month, said it would give priority to the housing issue.