Tourist Licence in the Basque Country: Requirements

The Basque Country is one of the regions where most people search for a tourist licence that does not exist, and the reason is that the rest of Spain speaks that language: anyone arriving from Andalusia or the Canary Islands takes for granted that there is a file, a wait and a decision granting something. In Bilbao or Donostia the problem is exactly the opposite. The procedure is quicker than they expect, and the filter that will stop them is not at the tourism counter.

That design has been in force since 2016 and it is not the part that catches anyone off guard today. The part that does arrived through the housing door, not the tourism one: a Basque act of urgent measures from December 2025 has turned the map of stressed municipalities into the map of the places where a new holiday home can no longer be registered. And that map includes the three capitals.

What counts as a holiday home in the Basque Country

The category is defined by article 53 of Ley 13/2016, de 28 de julio, de Turismo, the Basque tourism act in force:

“Viviendas para uso turístico are homes, of whatever type, that are offered or marketed as accommodation for tourist or holiday purposes, transferred temporarily by the owner, operator or manager and marketed directly by that person or indirectly, to third parties, on a repeated or habitual basis and in exchange for payment, under conditions of immediate availability.”

Three pieces of that definition decide whether your case falls inside it.

Habitual use is presumed, not argued. Article 53.7 treats it as established when you advertise or market the home on any tourist offer channel, or when you accommodate guests for a continuous period of 31 days or less twice or more within the same year¹. A listing on Airbnb or on Booking is enough on its own.

Residential letting is excluded, but the proof is on you. Article 53.4 excludes homes let under Ley 29/1994 on urban tenancies, and article 53.5 adds that a tourist activity will be taken to exist when it cannot be shown that the contract was made under that legislation¹. The decree goes further: unless proved otherwise, the transfer is presumed not to be subject to the tenancies act, and where a tourist offer channel is involved the accommodation is mandatorily subject to the decree².

Whoever signs is whoever operates, not always whoever owns. If the home is let and the tenant transfers it for tourist use, it is the tenant who files the declaración responsable and who ends up registered, with the added duty of telling the landlord¹. Under joint ownership a single person must be designated as the holder².

Whole homes and rooms are two different regimes

Article 54 regulates accommodation in rooms of private homes separately, and the conditions are not the same:

• Only a natural person can be the holder of the activity.
• That person must be registered on the padrón and actually living in the home while the activity remains alive. Failing to do so is a serious offence in itself².
• The same person cannot offer rooms in more than one home. If they do, the rest are treated as another type of establishment, with all its requirements¹.
• The tourist bedrooms must be different from those of whoever lives in the house, and living rooms cannot be used for sleeping².

The Registro de Empresas y Actividades Turísticas de Euskadi

Article 24 of the act describes the Registro de Empresas y Actividades Turísticas de Euskadi, REATE in the Basque Government’s own shorthand, as a public register of an administrative nature attached to the department responsible for tourism, and registration in it is not constitutive¹. Translated: it is not the register that gives you the right to operate, it is the declaración responsable. The register documents.

Its organisation is developed by Decreto 112/2019, de 16 de julio. Article 4 places holiday homes in Book I, section 2, under two headings: homes transferred whole and homes transferred by rooms³. Article 13 sets the effects: registration takes effect from the day the declaración responsable was filed complete, and gives rise to an identifying number that is notified to the holder³. That number has three pieces: a letter for the type of accommodation (E for the whole home, L for a room in a private home), the code of the territorio histórico (BI Bizkaia, SS Gipuzkoa, VI Araba/Álava) and five sequential digits. A holiday flat in Bilbao is identified as EBI00003, and a room in the same city as LBI00001.

That number is the one the act obliges you to show. Article 24.7 requires it to be included in all kinds of advertising, in any document or invoice and on any tourist offer channel¹, and article 20 of the holiday-home decree extends the duty to the channels themselves, which have to check that the accommodation has a number and insert it in everything they publish².

Where to find your REATE registration number

Article 14 of Decreto 112/2019 opens the register to anyone: the information it holds is freely accessible, and the officer in charge certifies the data at the request of an interested party³. In practice there are two routes: the notification of registration, the document carrying your number that article 21 of the act obliges the administration to send you when the check comes out compliant¹, and the public search tool of the register on the website of the Department of Tourism, Trade and Consumer Affairs, which filters by number, trade name, registration date, province, municipality and type of activity, the last of these mandatory and with separate options for whole home and for room⁴.

If what you are after is which number to publish in listings today, in the Basque Country it is the regional one: the single state register was annulled by the Tribunal Supremo in 2026, as told in the Supreme Court annuls the single register, and the breakdown of which number each region requires is in the registration number on Airbnb and Booking.

What it costs to register in the REATE: nothing

It is one of the few one-line answers in the whole procedure, and it is written down twice.

“Registrations and register searches shall be free of charge.”

Ley 13/2016 itself shielded it from the tax side: its second final provision added a point j) to article 44 of the consolidated text of the Basque act on fees and public prices, declaring registrations in the tourism register exempt from the administrative services fee¹. There is no registration fee and no search fee.

That does not mean registering is free overall. The real spending sits outside the tourism administration: the scale drawing produced by competent technical staff, the public liability insurance and, if the home falls short of the decree’s requirements, the building work to get it there.

Requirements for a holiday home in the Basque Country

They are set by Decreto 101/2018, de 3 de julio. These are the physical conditions an inspection checks, grouped in blocks.

Habitability and planning

• A valid first occupancy licence or cédula de habitabilidad (habitability certificate), required by article 53.10 of the act¹.
• Compliance with municipal rules on planning uses and building: it is one of the points you declare and that the town council reports on afterwards².
• The activity cannot be carried on if the statutes or rules of the comunidad de propietarios (the owners’ association), as entered in the Land Registry, contain an express prohibition².

Layout and floor area

• Transferred whole: at least a kitchen, a bathroom and a room intended for sleeping (living rooms fitted out for that purpose count).
• Transferred by rooms: a kitchen, a bathroom and at least one tourist bedroom different from those of whoever lives there. Here living rooms do not count.
• Bedrooms, and living rooms when used for sleeping, need natural light and direct ventilation to the outside or to a ventilated courtyard, and private use separated by a door.
• One bathroom for every four people, with a washbasin, a toilet and a shower tray or bath. A bathroom inside a room is treated as being for the exclusive use of whoever occupies it, so it does not count towards the rest².

Capacity

Where there is no specific municipal rule, the maximum number of occupants comes from three ratios: 25 m² of usable floor area for one person, 33 m² for two and 15 m² per person from three onwards, not counting terraces, balconies or drying areas. And above the ratios there is an absolute ceiling:

“In all cases, homes for tourist use, whether transferred whole or by rooms, may not offer more than 8 places in total, including among them the persons whose effective residence is in the home.”

If you declare a higher occupancy, you are not registered as a holiday home: you would have to register as whichever type of accommodation establishment applies, with that type’s requirements. And accommodating more people than appear on the register is expressly prohibited².

Equipment and immediate availability

• Fully furnished and fitted with installations, appliances, household goods and cleaning items for immediate use.
• Electricity, hot and cold running drinking water, and heating in bedrooms, bathrooms, living room and dining room.
• Per bedroom: a bed, a wardrobe with enough hangers, a chair or armchair, and a bedside table with a night lamp.
• A bed base, mattress, pillows, sheets and blankets or a duvet per bed, and one set of towels per person.
• Compulsory cleaning before each arrival².

Safety and information

• Next to the entrance and in a visible place: a plan showing the exits and the places in each room, the telephone numbers of the nearest fire brigade, police and health services, the 112 number, a hand-held fire extinguisher and a first-aid kit.
• Telephone support from 08:00 to 22:00, Monday to Sunday.
• Public liability insurance of 35,000 euros per place, calculated on the maximum allowed in the declaración responsable, in force until you deregister the activity.
• An official plaque (distintivo) on the outside of the building and another next to the door of the home. If the structure of the building makes the outside one impossible, an exemption must be applied for before filing the declaración responsable, and it is granted only with a favourable technical report².

How to register a holiday home in the Basque Country

The order matters, because two of these steps have to be taken before you touch the form.

1. Check whether your municipality has been declared a zona de mercado residencial tensionado. If it has and the home is new to the register, the procedure does not end in registration. That is the filter the next section explains.
2. Apply for the exemption from the outside plaque if the structure of the building does not allow it to be fitted. It comes before the declaration and is resolved with a technical report.
3. Gather what goes attached: photographs of the façade and the interior that make the home identifiable, and a scale drawing produced by competent technical staff, showing the usable floor area, the layout and the maximum number of places².
4. File the declaración responsable on the official form in annex I of the decree, electronically through the Basque Government’s e-office, where the procedure is listed as “Actividades turísticas”, or on paper at the territorial offices of the department responsible for tourism². The register is managed on a decentralised basis by the territory where the property is located³.
5. From that moment you may operate. A complete filing authorises the activity for an indefinite period and produces registration of its own motion, with one number per home notified to you².
6. The tourism directorate opens a checking procedure and notifies you of it. Within that procedure it asks the town council for a mandatory and binding report on the residential character of the home, the first occupancy licence or habitability certificate, the compliance of the tourist use with municipal rules, the maximum occupancy on its files and the environmental requirements².
7. You are required to produce the supporting documents for the remaining requirements within ten working days, and the check may be completed with an inspection visit².
8. Fit the plaque and publish the number in every listing, invoice and information document, whatever the channel¹.

The deadline for the municipal report is the detail that saves the most anxiety:

“The town council shall send its report within a maximum of three months from the request. If, once that period has elapsed, the report has not been received, compliance with the requirements referred to shall be taken as verified and the procedure shall continue.”

And the whole procedure is on a clock: the decision closing it must be issued and notified within a maximum of six months from the decision to open it, and once that period passes with no notification the file lapses and is closed, without prejudice to a new one being started².

If the check finds an inaccuracy, a falsehood or an omission, you have fifteen working days to make representations and put it right. There are four essential items of data: those affecting the legal personality of the holder, those involving a risk to people’s safety (fires in particular), those relating to the required insurance, and the capacity of the home². If those four are affected, the result is removal from the register and the impossibility of carrying on¹.

How to change or cancel a Basque holiday-home registration

The decree splits changes into two lanes, and both must be filed before the change happens²:

If the change to an essential element means you stop meeting a requirement, what is called for is the declaración responsable of cessation. The detail of a sale with the activity running is in change of ownership of a holiday home.

Stressed market areas: where new homes cannot register

This is the big change and it is recent. Ley 6/2025, de 11 de diciembre, de Medidas Urgentes en materia de Vivienda, Suelo y Urbanismo rewrote paragraph 4 of article 20 of the tourism act. It was published in the BOPV of 29 December 2025 and has been in force since the 30th⁵. This is the wording that governs today:

“The filing of the declaración responsable of commencement of activity, complete, has as its immediate effect registration in the register governed by article 24 of this act. However, in those areas declared by the department responsible for housing as stressed residential market areas, an automatic suspension shall apply to the carrying on of the activity of new homes and rooms for tourist use, which shall be maintained throughout the validity of that declaration, which shall mean their non-registration in the Registro de Empresas y Actividades Turísticas.”

Four practical consequences can be read straight off that paragraph. The suspension is automatic, with no tourism decision ordering it: it is enough that the municipality has been declared. It is declared by the Housing department, not the tourism one, so the lever is no longer in the tourism act. It reaches homes and rooms, so letting rooms in the house where you live is not a way out. And it lasts for the whole validity of the declaration.

Each municipality is declared by an Order of the Minister for Housing and Urban Agenda published in the BOPV, and the Secretaría de Estado de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana then collects the approved declarations each quarter in a resolution published in the BOE, which is what sets the start of validity: three years from the day after its publication.

Basque municipalities declared a stressed market area

The first seventeen rows are collected in the publication of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda consolidating the areas declared between the first quarter of 2024 and the first of 2026⁶; Basauri was added by the resolution for the second quarter of 2026⁷.

Two qualifications change the answer in particular cases: Vitoria-Gasteiz is declared with an express exclusion of the rural area of smaller local entities not included in the urban fabric, and Galdakao only in its district 2. In those two municipalities the answer depends on where the front door is, not on the municipal boundary.

What happens to homes already on the register

Article 20.4 suspends the activity of new homes and rooms, and it neither defines what counts as new nor sets out a transitional regime. Our reading is that a home already registered when its municipality was declared does not fall within that provision and carries on operating, with its number and its obligations intact.

What has changed for the whole stock in a stressed area is that failing to comply with the measures flowing from the declaration now has its own enforcement lane in the housing act. The same Ley 6/2025 added a point h) to article 4.2 of Ley 3/2015 on housing, turning it into a failure to meet the social function of housing, and a point aa) to article 84 classifying it as a serious offence: “Letting a home located in an area declared a stressed residential market area in breach of the specific obligations and measures flowing from the declaration”⁵. That is a different file from the tourism one and the two can run together.

The Catalan precedent for the same mechanism, with its timetable and the extinction of licences in 2028, is in Catalonia and HUTB licences in 2028.

Holiday homes on rural land: what changed in 2025

Until March 2025, Decreto 101/2018 carried a first additional provision that left homes and rooms for tourist use in rural settlements and on non-developable land outside its scope, and referred them to Decreto 199/2013 on tourist accommodation in rural areas. That reference led nowhere: Decreto 199/2013 governs agroturismos, casas rurales, rural hotels, rural apartments and rural hostels, and none of its categories is the holiday home. Decreto 52/2025, de 25 de febrero, published in the BOPV of 18 March, wiped the provision out in one stroke:

“The First Additional Provision of Decreto 101/2018, de 3 de julio, on homes and rooms of private homes for tourist use, is hereby repealed.”

Since 19 March 2025, then, a holiday home in a rural settlement or on non-developable land in the Basque Country is governed by the same Decreto 101/2018 as one in Bilbao: the same eight places, the same bathroom for every four people, the same insurance and the same plaque. Those already registered before that were given, by Decreto 52/2025 itself, six months from its entry into force to adapt and file a declaración responsable on the form in its annex, processed afterwards under articles 8 and 9 of the 2018 decree⁸. That deadline ran out on 19 September 2025.

Mind the boundary: if what you operate is an agroturismo or a casa rural in the sense of article 49 of the act, you remain under Decreto 199/2013. The repeal affects homes and rooms for tourist use, not the rural categories proper.

Fines: from a warning to 600,000 euros

Decreto 101/2018 has no penalty table of its own: it refers to title VII of Ley 13/2016². The amounts are set by its article 100, and the conduct by articles 93 to 95⁹.

Four more rules usually decide the final amount:

• Clandestine activity is not a vague category. Article 27 defines it as advertising, marketing or carrying on a tourist activity without having filed the declaración responsable, and article 53.6 adds that contracting or operating homes without one will be treated as such¹. Publishing the listing already completes it.
• Repeat offending doubles it. The applicable penalty is increased by one hundred per cent; where the conduct is repeated, the very serious band applies, increased by one hundred per cent⁹.
• Some ancillary penalties bite harder than the fine: loss of the effects of the declaración responsable, suspension of the activity for one year for repeated serious offences and two for repeated very serious ones, and closure for two to five years or permanently for repeat very serious offences causing serious harm to Basque tourism interests⁹.
• Coercive fines add up. If you fail to comply with an order to put things right, each coercive fine can reach twenty per cent of the penalty set for the offence, and they can be repeated⁹.

Offences lapse after one year for minor ones, two years for serious ones and three for very serious ones, counted from the day they were committed, and conduct involving a permanent obligation on the holder does not lapse⁹. There is one good note: article 26 of Decreto 101/2018 requires minor offences by holders of holiday homes and rooms to be penalised with a warning, provided there is no repeat offending and no aggravating circumstance².

The Basque Country also publishes figures on its inspection activity in holiday homes; the territory-by-territory count is in inspections and fines by region, and the comparison of fine bands with the other eighteen regions is in renting without a tourist licence.

No per-stay admission document in the Basque Country

Anyone who also manages in Andalusia, Asturias or the Balearics arrives in the Basque Country looking for the sheet that gets signed at the door there, and here it does not exist: Decreto 101/2018 imposes no admission document and no entry sheet per stay, signed or unsigned. The equivalent duty is shifted to the other end of the calendar, before the guest books, and it is about information, not signatures.

“Las personas usuarias de las viviendas o habitaciones que son objeto del presente Decreto tendrán derecho, antes de concertar la reserva o el servicio, a recibir una información ajustada a las exigencias de veracidad, objetividad y buena fe, que les proporcione los datos suficientes sobre las características del alojamiento y sus condiciones de uso.”

The format is prescribed. The information is supplied by email, by other digital means or on paper and, in every case, on a durable medium, so that the guest can store it, consult it and reproduce it for a period consistent with its purpose². A message inside a platform’s chat, which disappears when the booking closes, is not a durable medium.

The content is the eight points of paragraph 3, none of them optional²:

• Identification of the holder of the activity, their tax number and their REATE registration number, plus the trade name of the accommodation if it has one.
• Whether the dwelling is let whole or by rooms, and its features, with express reference to the services it offers, such as internet or air conditioning, without misleading.
• Maximum occupancy, with the number of places in each room.
• Reception procedure for guests, with check-in and check-out times.
• Time and method of payment.
• Full final price, taxes and levies included, broken down by item, stating expressly any service that is paid for separately.
• Terms applying to bookings and withdrawal, with express reference to the loss of deposits and to cancellation penalties.
• Whether the accommodation has signed up to the consumer arbitration system.

Two further communications ride on the same article: before the contract is entered into or, where there is no written contract, before the service is provided, you have to tell the guest which insurer covers your civil liability; and you have to pass on their duty to respect the internal rules and the building’s rules of coexistence, with express mention of the other residents’ right to rest².

No admission document does not mean the guest has no right to something in writing. Ley 13/2016 grants it at the moment the contract is formalised:

“Recibir, al formalizar el contrato, todos los documentos que acrediten los términos y condiciones de la contratación de los servicios turísticos, mediante un escrito donde consten la identificación de la persona prestadora del servicio, las características y condiciones del bien o servicio, el precio final completo, incluidos los impuestos y tasas, y, en su caso, las condiciones y consecuencias del desistimiento, así como los justificantes del pago efectuado.”

Two things follow for whoever manages the property. The first is what your evidence is: neither the decree nor the law sets a retention period or names an authority to hold the document for, so our reading is that what you need to be able to show is the sending itself, the email or the PDF dated before the booking, and that it is worth keeping for as long as claims can run. The second is who answers when the booking comes through a platform: the article binds the holder of the activity, with no exemption for intermediation, so the listing page does not replace the durable-medium sending.

Failure has two separate offences in Ley 13/2016. Not meeting the formal duties on documentation, or not keeping mandatory documentation for the prescribed period, is a minor offence under article 93.10, punishable by a warning or a fine of up to 10,000 euros. Refusing to give a user who asks for it the documentation evidencing the terms of the contract is a serious offence under article 94.10, from 10,001 to 100,000 euros⁹.

Basque guest reports go to the Ertzaintza

Registration is done once. The obligation that comes back with every guest is a different one, and in the Basque Country it has a recipient of its own.

Article 18 of Decreto 101/2018 refers the matter wholesale: the accommodation it governs is subject to the duties of documentary registration and reporting of guests’ arrivals and departures “in the manner determined by the legislation in force on public safety”². And that legislation, in the Basque Country, channels the report to the Ertzaintza through the Basque Government’s system. Our reading is that this report satisfies the obligation in the Basque Country and does not come on top of a state submission, although neither the Basque order nor article 18 says so in those words.

The operational part is written down. The Order of 25 November 2022 of the Minister for Security, in force since 2 January 2023, requires the establishment’s details to be reported before starting the activity and, after that, each stay to be reported twice: once when the booking is made, the contract signed or cancelled, and again when the contracted services begin, with 24 hours for each. The computerised record is kept for three years¹⁰. And SES.HOSPEDAJES credentials do not open the Basque system: registering there is a separate matter.

How that circuit works, what data it asks for and when each deadline starts is in guest registration in Catalonia and the Basque Country, and the state framework from which that territorial exception is carved out is in Real Decreto 933/2021.

The Basque tourist tax starts on 1 January 2027

This is a third obligation, separate from the licence and from the guest report, and it is worth having in the calendar because it affects the price you publish. Bizkaia, with Norma Foral 3/2026, de 18 de junio¹¹, Gipuzkoa, with Norma Foral 3/2026, de 12 de junio¹², and Álava, with Norma Foral 13/2026, de 10 de junio¹³, have each approved their own Impuesto sobre Estancias Turísticas (tax on tourist stays). The Bizkaia one entered into force the day after publication in the BOB, but all three take effect from 1 January 2027. For a holiday home, whether transferred whole or by rooms, article 9 of each rule sets the same band, between 4.50 and 6.50 euros per person and unit of stay, within which each town council fixes the rate by tax by-law.

The exemptions, the cap on days per stay, the municipal reductions and what happens if your town council reaches 2027 without a by-law are in tourist taxes in Spain by region, which covers the three normas forales.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need a tourist licence to rent out a flat in the Basque Country? To rent out a tourist flat in the Basque Country you do not need a tourist licence in the strict sense: you need to file a declaración responsable of commencement of activity with the Basque Government’s tourism directorate. A complete filing authorises you from that very moment and registers the home in the regional register of its own motion, with no prior decision granting anything. What may be missing separately is municipal planning compliance, which is checked afterwards by a binding report from the town council.

How much does it cost to register a home in the Basque tourism register? Registering a home in the Basque tourism register costs nothing: article 3 of Decreto 112/2019 declares registrations and register searches free of charge, and Ley 13/2016 left those registrations expressly exempt from the administrative services fee. The real cost of registering sits outside the tourism administration: the scale drawing signed by a competent technician and the public liability insurance of 35,000 euros per place.

How long does it take to register a holiday home in the Basque Country? Registering a holiday home in the Basque Country is immediate as far as the authorisation goes and slow only in closing the file: you can operate from the moment you file the complete declaración responsable. A checking procedure then opens, asking the town council for a report, with three months to answer and favourable silence, and its decision must be notified within a maximum of six months from the decision to open it.

How many guest places can a holiday home have in the Basque Country? A holiday home in the Basque Country can have eight places at most, and that count also includes the people whose effective residence is in it. Below that ceiling the usable floor area rules: 25 square metres for one place, 33 for two and 15 per person from three onwards, not counting terraces, balconies or drying areas. Declaring a higher occupancy does not give you more places, it takes the home out of the category.

Can I register a new holiday home in Bilbao or Donostia? Registering a new holiday home in Bilbao or Donostia is not possible while their declaration as a stressed residential market area remains in force. Since 30 December 2025 the Basque tourism act applies in those municipalities an automatic suspension of the activity of new homes and rooms for tourist use, and that suspension means they are not entered in the register. Those already registered before the declaration carry on operating.

Can I rent out rooms in my own home in the Basque Country? Renting out rooms in your own home in the Basque Country is a category that exists and is regulated, with three conditions the whole home does not have: the holder must be a natural person, that person must be registered on the padrón and actually living in the home for as long as the activity lasts, and nobody can offer rooms in more than one home. The tourist bedrooms must be different from those of the residents, and living rooms do not count as bedrooms.

Minimum checklist for a Basque holiday home

• Municipality checked in the BOPV and in the BOE in case it has been declared a stressed residential market area.
• First occupancy licence or habitability certificate, and the owners’ association statutes reviewed in case there is an express registered prohibition.
• Places calculated by usable floor area and within the ceiling of eight, residents included, and one bathroom for every four people.
• Fire extinguisher, first-aid kit, exit plan and telephone numbers next to the entrance, and telephone support from 08:00 to 22:00.
• Public liability insurance of 35,000 euros per place, in force until deregistration.
• Scale drawing by a competent technician and photographs of the façade and the interior, to attach to the declaración responsable.
• Official plaque on the outside of the building and next to the door of the home, or an exemption applied for beforehand.
• The regional register number in every listing, invoice and document, and on the offer channels.
• A report on every guest to the Ertzaintza through the Basque Government’s system: one when the booking is made and another on arrival, within 24 hours each.
• The calendar marked on 1 January 2027 for the Impuesto sobre Estancias Turísticas.

This article is informative and does not replace legal advice. Basque tourism and housing rules change often, and the list of stressed residential market areas grows every quarter. Check the detail in the Boletín Oficial del País Vasco and with the Basque Government’s tourism directorate before filing.