From Lajares Law Offices we have been at a conference organised by the Association of Tax Advisors of the Canary Islands, where we reviewed certain data from a study carried out by the Association of Economists of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria regarding the holiday homes. The work is entitled ‘El turismo de Canarias, un multimodelo a revisión’, directed by Rosa Rodríguez Díez.

According to this study, the data used by the Government of the Canary Islands to justify the draft bill on holiday housing are erroneous and need to be significantly refined, concluding that the problem of holiday housing varies greatly from one municipality to another and that the conclusions drawn from the data are wrong. We are facing a struggle of data, but it is surprising that from the ‘same’ data such different conclusions or positions are reached.

What we can share from this study is the following conclusion or premise about a fact that seems not to be contradictory. If a large part of the holiday homes are in tourist areas, i.e. areas where the urban development planning wants tourists to be separated from residents, art 3 c) of Law 2/213 on the modernisation of tourism in the Canary Islands ‘To avoid and, where appropriate, to redirect the residentialisation of tourist areas’, it does not seem logical to set limits for the implantation of holiday homes in these areas if the regulation does not want permanent residential dwellings in these areas.

It is logical to think that in this tourist area there is no conflict between the lack of permanent residential housing and the right to decent housing, since the law does not want people to live in this area together with tourists, as is expressly stated in all tourism and land-use planning laws.

However, in a rather radical turn of events or change of position, the government now considers that workers should live close to their workplace and should not have to commute long distances for reasons of emissions and so on, and implicitly seems to be seeking the residentialisation of tourist areas. This seems to contradict what is clearly stated in the regulation and by the Canarian legislator about tourist areas and the search to avoid residentialisation in these areas. It would be good if they could clarify this for us.

And this is linked to the premise that we mentioned in the first blog on secondary homes and holiday homes, where we warned that in most Canarian municipalities, especially tourist ones, there are secondary homes, homes that were never intended to serve as permanent residences and therefore can never be part of the problem of the lack of access to the right to decent residential housing.

From Lajares Law office we conclude that there should be no limit on this type of secondary homes to implement holiday home activity and the municipality can prevent its planning from regulating the limitations imposed in tourist areas and second homes.