The Draft Bill for the Sustainable Management of the tourist use of housing in the Canary Islands establishes a ‘conflict’ between permanent residential housing and holiday homes.

It is founded, among other reasons, on the fact that the number of holiday homes is endangering the right to a permanent residential dwelling and, therefore, several limits regarding planning and percentages are established.

In the social reality of this regulation and when it comes to justifying the reasons for its approval, whether in the text itself or in statements to the media, only properties used as permanent homes or as holiday homes are referred to, forgetting that there are properties which, fulfilling the requirements to be defined as such, were promoted, acquired or used as secondary residences for their owners.

We believe that this type of property (secondary residence) exists in the Canary Islands’ real estate range which in no way was originally intended to serve as a permanent residence for its owner, but rather to serve his or his friends’ leisure or even to rent it out on a seasonal basis. And so many developments all over the island, buildings, complexes and single-family houses are owned by many Canary Islanders, Majoreros and foreigners for this purpose. 

To pretend that this reality and this consolidated use of secondary homes or ‘houses on the coast’ in society is non-existent and unimportant would require an impossible exercise in blindness, given that many such buildings were conceived, purchased and used in a consolidated manner over time. Their existence as a reality is confirmed by the Tax Agency when defining them, by the INE when studying them and is mentioned in the Canarian Housing Law.

Therefore, it seems clearly necessary to incorporate the debate on secondary homes, which  is an important part of the social reality which the draft bill intends to regulate, and it needs to be taken into account. Without it, the picture given of the social reality and taken into account for the new regulation is unclear, and for this reason its regulation will be weakened.

We start from the premise that, if a second home has never been intended to serve as a permanent residence, it should not generate any conflict with residential housing and the right of access to decent housing, by not withdrawing from the market units that were intended to be a permanent residence.

We Law Fuerteventura and we Law you.