Law 6/2025, enacted on 10 December 2025, regulates the tourist use of residential dwellings (viviendas de uso turístico or holiday rentals) in the Canary Islands. It prioritises protecting access to habitual housing, distinguishing tourist use (commercial and temporary) from residential use (stable and permanent). The law restricts new holiday rentals in residential areas to combat housing shortages, speculation, and overtourism, while applying stricter rules in high-pressure islands (Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura) than in less-affected ones (El Hierro, La Gomera, La Palma).

Key Provisions and Requirements for Tourist Dwellings

• Article 1 (Object and Scope): The law governs commercial tourist letting of fully furnished dwellings marketed via tourist channels. It aims to balance tourism with housing rights and sustainability. This is not true as the law looks to protect the Hotel industry and does not have any incidence in housing rights…, but this is the political coverage.
• Article 3 (Residential Use): Residential land must serve habitual housing needs. Tourist use is incompatible as it is commercial, not residential. In my opinion the law does not distinguish between primary residences and secondary residences, whereas the reality in the Canary Islands is that many of the dwellings being built are intended to be secondary residences, not permanent ones. On one hand, there are high-end houses that cannot be affordable housing, and on the other, the beach apartment type does not meet all the requirements for comfort and habitability to be considered a home suitable for living by a family with children, for example.
• Article 4 (Urban Planning Powers): Municipalities generally prohibit tourist use in residential zones via planning instruments, allowing exceptions only with strong justification (e.g., low housing pressure). New rentals are largely banned in saturated areas. It is a long way to see if they act accordingly as we all know that the planning is normally a chaos and takes a lot of years…, La Oliva has been planning since 2000 and willing to change it since then with no success.
• Article 5 (Direct Requirements – Minimum Age): Dwellings must be at least 10 years old (from first occupation certificate) in high-tension islands, or 5 years in others. Exemptions apply to new-builds in authorised tourist zones or renovated properties under specific schemes. Protected housing (VPO) cannot be used for tourism.  It’s incredible that the law prohibits new dwellings from being suitable for holiday rental use. The law requires them to be at least 10 years old, and knowing that between 2006 and 2015 hardly any homes were built in the Canary Islands due to the crisis, this means that the only ones eligible for a holiday rental (VV) licence are obsolete, inefficient dwellings with no sustainability criteria, doomed to become an outdated and old offer. This has a significant impact on the construction and property development business.
• Article 6 (Classified Activity): Tourist letting counts as a classified activity, subject to environmental, safety, and urban compatibility controls. Ok, but the Town Hall is not really active with this as they cannot afford such a heavy duty with the limited personnel they have…, it is more a desire than a fact…
• Article 7 (Administrative Regime – Responsible Declaration): Authorisation requires a declaración responsable (responsible declaration) submitted to the island council (cabildo). Key requirements include:
  • Habitability certificate (cédula de habitabilidad).
  • Proof of no tax/utility debts.
  • Energy efficiency certificate.
  • Accessibility features.
  • No protected housing status.
  • Compliance with community rules (horizontal property agreement allowing tourist use).
  • Insurance and safety standards. False declarations lead to sanctions.
• Article 8 (Registration): The cabildo registers the property and issues a tourist registration number, mandatory for advertising. As before.
• Article 9 (Change of Use): Municipalities must be notified of the shift from residential to tourist use for tax/urban records. It´s always about money, they will try to charge more for collection of rubbish, local council tax and so….
• Article 10 (Temporal Limitation): New declarations are valid for 5 years, renewable if conditions persist. This prevents indefinite commercial exploitation of residential stock. 
• Regarding new licences, it can be said that they will not be granted, at least in La Oliva. On the one hand, the requirement that dwellings must be old will condition the market, but if the Government acknowledges that there are 17,000 holiday rental (VV) beds in La Oliva for a population of around 30,000 inhabitants and prohibits exceeding 10% of the total population (17,000 – 3,000 = 14,000), then 14,000 beds will be outside the legal framework (fuera de ordenación). On the other hand, there is the maximum limit of 10% of VV relative to the total housing stock in the municipality, and in this case, since we are already starting from the Government’s own data with 21.50%, this limit will never be met and new VV will never be allowed.

Other rules ban tourist use in infraviviendas (substandard housing) and impose advertising restrictions.

Transitional Regime for Pre-Existing Authorisations

The law grandfathers existing holiday rentals (those legally operating or registered before entry into force) under a favourable transitional regime:

• Consolidated Tourist Use: Dwellings with proven prior tourist exploitation (e.g., registered under Decree 113/2015 or with evidence of commercial letting) are exempt from Article 10’s 5-year limit. They can continue indefinitely without temporal restriction, provided owners regularise within deadlines. The old clients will have their rights protected.
• Regularisation Process:
  • Owners must submit an updated responsible declaration with supporting documents (e.g., prior registration, habitability certificate, proof of 5 years’ residential letting if applicable, or contracts evidencing tourist use).
  • For newer buildings (post-2015 in some cases), additional proof of compliance with urban/tourist rules is required.
  • Deadline: Generally 5 years from entry into force for first tourist occupation in certain cases; shorter periods for documentation submission.
• Ongoing sanctions or revocation procedures (under prior laws like Law 2/2013) may be archived if compliance is demonstrated.
• Special rules apply in El Hierro, La Gomera, and La Palma (less restrictive).

This regime protects legitimate existing operators while preventing expansion.

Deadlines for Public Administrations

The law imposes short deadlines on administrations:

• Municipalities have 3 months to identify consolidated tourist dwellings and update urban records.
• Cabildos must integrate data into the General Tourist Register and coordinate with the Single Digital Window.
• Broader obligations include updating registries and sharing data across authorities.

These tight timelines (often 3–6 months) are widely seen as unrealistic given administrative burdens, likely leading to delays and non-compliance in practice.

This is absurd; the administrations will not meet these deadlines because they never do, so everything will be delayed…

In summary, the law sharply restricts new holiday rentals (requiring old buildings, declarations, and time limits) while grandfathering most existing ones with regularisation. It shifts the Canary Islands towards a more housing-protective model.

NOTE. As it seems that this law has created major conflicts between the involved administrations, new modifications to the Law are expected in the first quarter of 2026, which represents a clear example of the lack of diligence and excellence in the Law itself, since it does not seem logical to amend it just three months after its approval.