Tourist taxes in Spain by region: rates and who collects

Few topics in the Spanish rental business produce so many headlines and so little certainty. Every season brings new taxes announced, a handful approved and very few actually charged, which leaves half the sector convinced it owes something that does not exist in its region and the other half finding out too late that it does.

The detail matters because a tourist tax is not something you configure once and forget. It varies by region, by establishment category, by season and, increasingly, by municipal ordinance, so what was right for your apartment last year may be wrong this summer. And the filing always lands on the lodging, which acts as tax substitute before the tax agency.

Here is the picture region by region, with current amounts, exemptions and the paperwork that falls to you.

Which Spanish regions charge a tourist tax: summary table

All seventeen regions and the two autonomous cities, as they stood in August 2026:

Catalonia: the IEET, now pricier

The tax on stays in tourist establishments (IEET) has existed since 2012, but Law 2/2026 raised it with effect from 1 April 2026¹. Current rates per person and day, per the Agència Tributària de Catalunya (ATC)²:

Operational keys:

• The quota is per person per day, capped at 7 days per stay³.
• Under-17s are exempt, as are health-motivated stays, force-majeure stays and stays subsidised by the social programmes of any EU public administration, Spanish ones included³.
• You self-assess with the ATC via form 950 (or 940/920 by case), in two half-year windows: 1-20 October for April-September stays, and 1-20 April for October-March stays⁴.
• There are two municipal surcharge regimes and they should not be mixed up. Article 34 ter lets any Catalan municipality approve a surcharge of up to 4 EUR per person per day by ordinance, chargeable on stays from 1 October 2026. That maximum carries a second limit: the surcharge can never exceed the category’s own tariff, so for a tourist-use dwelling outside Barcelona the real ceiling is 1.75 EUR, not 4. Barcelona runs on article 34 bis, with an 8 EUR ceiling and the 5 EUR it already applies¹. Watch your town’s ordinance.
• A second rise is already scheduled for the rest of Catalonia from 1 April 2027, in article 34.1(c) itself: tourist dwellings go from 1.75 to 2.50 EUR, and 5-star hotels from 4.50 to 6.00 EUR¹².

If you also manage a dwelling in a stressed zone, remember the tax and the Decree-Law 3/2023 licence calendar are separate fronts: paying the IEET proves nothing about your licence.

Balearics: the ecotasa, article 13 rates and the low season

The sustainable tourism tax (ITS), the ecotasa, has run since Law 2/2016. The article 13 tariff, per person and day: 4 EUR at 5-star, gran lujo and superior 4-star hotels and at 4-key apartments; 3 EUR at 4-star and superior 3-star hotels and at superior 3-key apartments; 2 EUR at dwellings marketed for tourist use and at hotels and apartments of one to three stars or keys; 1 EUR at hostales, pensiones, campsites, albergues and refugios. Two rebates apply to that quota, 75% in low season (1 November to 30 April) and 50% from the ninth day of the stay; under-16s are exempt, as are health-motivated stays and stays subsidised by EU public social programmes. It is settled with the Balearic agency (ATIB)⁵.

The article 13 figures are the quota before VAT: the official ITS calculator adds 10%, so a 5-star stay invoices at 4.40 EUR per person per day in high season⁶.

Treat the headlines about a rise with suspicion. Figures circulate for a summer surcharge (2 EUR extra from June to August) and for an exemption in January and February that are not in the law: the article 13 rate table still carries the wording given to it by Law 13/2017, in force since 1 January 2018, and no later rule, Law 4/2026 included, has touched it⁵. January and February are low season and pay 25% of the quota, and the official ITS calculator applies exactly those rates⁶. If you operate on the islands, charge per article 13 and confirm your category’s rate with the ATIB before each season.

The Balearics are also the enforcement laboratory, and not by accident: the Fondo para Favorecer el Turismo Sostenible is funded by the entire ITS take, and article 19.3 lists among its purposes better inspection and the fight against illegal tourist supply, letters e) and g)⁷. This summer’s campaign comes with daily coercive fines.

Basque Country: date set, 1 January 2027

In June 2026 the Juntas Generales of Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Álava each approved a foral rule creating the Impuesto sobre Estancias Turísticas, which applies simultaneously in the three territories from 1 January 2027⁸⁹¹⁰. It taxes the stay by days or fractions, with or without an overnight, and all three set bands of 0.50 to 6.50 EUR per person per day by lodging type (tourist-use dwellings in the high band: 4.50 to 6.50 EUR), which each municipality fixes by fiscal ordinance⁸.

Two transition details worth noting now:

• The tax is not chargeable on bookings formalised before 5 February 2026, even if the stay falls in 2027⁸.
• If your town hall has not passed its fiscal ordinance by 1 January 2027, the maximum rates apply directly: 6.50 EUR for a tourist-use dwelling. The ordinance can also rebate the quota by up to 100% in municipalities with little lodging supply or add up to 50% in those with the highest tourist intensity, so do not configure 2027 prices without checking it⁸.

Asturias: tax approved by the government, pending parliament

Asturias’ regional government approved its tourist-stays bill on 29 June 2026: a municipal, voluntary tax of 0.50 to 3 EUR per person per night, capped at 5 nights, applicable in high season (1 June to 30 September plus the central days of Semana Santa), with various exemptions¹¹. Parliamentary passage remains, so the realistic scenario is the first municipalities charging in the 2027 season. If you operate in Asturias, follow your council’s plenary, and leave your prices alone for now.

Galicia: Santiago and A Coruña charge it, not the Xunta

Galicia is the most copied model and the least understood. Law 5/2024 created the Galician tax on tourist stays, in force since 1 January 2025, and zeroed it out in the same breath: article 17 sets a 100% rebate, so the regional government collects nothing. What the guest pays is the municipal surcharge of article 24, which each council may approve by ordinance up to 100% of the gross quota, before the rebate¹².

So the Galician law’s tariff is what actually gets charged wherever the council switches the surcharge on. Per person and day: 1 EUR at tourist apartments, tourist dwellings, campsites and rural tourism; 2 EUR at tourist-use dwellings (VUT); 1.50 to 2.50 EUR at hotels by category. Five days maximum per stay, unemancipated minors and people with a disability of 65% or more are exempt, and health-motivated stays, for the patient and their companions, fall outside the tax altogether where the care received is part of the Galician public health service’s catalogue of services¹².

Santiago de Compostela and A Coruña have charged it since the last quarter of 2025¹³. Vigo is the third: its plenary gave the ordinance definitive approval on 25 May 2026 and the surcharge applies from 1 October 2026, with a transitional regime taxing only the first two nights of each stay until 30 June 2027, according to El Español¹⁴. If you operate there, the start date and the amount come from the municipal ordinance, check them before touching prices.

The first Galician audit carries a lesson for everyone. The Consello de Contas measured compliance in the first accrual quarter: 27.31% in Santiago (260 filings for 952 establishments) and 7.76% in A Coruña (110 for 1,417), with tourist-use dwellings responding worse than hotels and with discrepancies between declared stays and verified occupancy¹³. Translation: administrations are already looking at who declares and who does not, and cross-checking against lodging registries is trivial.

No tourist tax in Spain: rejections, debates and one annulment

A region not charging it does not mean nobody is discussing it. The cases worth following:

• Canary Islands. There is no regional tax and the Canary government has refused to create one. There is a pioneering municipal one: Mogán charges 0.15 EUR per person per day¹⁵. The Canary Islands High Court annulled the ordinance in a July 2026 judgment, for failing to specify which services it financed, that is, for disguising a tax as a fee, according to Canarias7¹⁶. But the ruling is not final, so the council keeps charging the tax, has announced a cassation appeal to the Supreme Court and is keeping the 1.4 million euros already collected frozen¹⁷. The judgment explains better than anything why councils that want to charge are waiting for a regional law to enable them.
• Madrid. Neither the city nor the regional government wants it, and the city could not approve it alone anyway: a municipality cannot create its own tax on overnight stays without a regional law enabling it, which is exactly what Galicia has and Madrid does not¹⁸.
• Andalusia. Seville’s city council pushed for it again in 2026 and Málaga and Granada are watching closely, but the decision belongs to the regional government, which has not opened the door. With no Andalusian law there is no tax, in Seville or anywhere else.
• Valencia region. Law 7/2022 created the Valencian tax on tourist stays and the regional government repealed it by decree-law in November 2023, one month before it was due to take effect¹⁹. Nothing is in the pipeline.
• Aragón, Cantabria and Navarre. All three have the debate on the table (Jaca formally asked the Aragonese government to enable municipalities) and in all three the regional government has blocked it, though not for the same reason: Aragón cites tax pressure and the deterrent effect on visitors; Cantabria and Navarre have simply ruled it out.

In Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Murcia, La Rioja, Ceuta and Melilla there is no tax and no known initiative. Nothing to configure in 2026, beyond watching each December’s regional budget laws, which is where these taxes tend to appear.

How the tourist tax relates to guest registration

Formally, nothing: the tax is a regional or municipal fiscal matter; guest registration is a state security obligation. In practice, everything: both are computed over the same stays, the same nights and the same people. If your check-in already captures who stays, how many nights and how many guests are minors, the half-yearly form 950 self-assessment, or its regional equivalent, comes out of a listing instead of a reconstruction. It is a side benefit of automating guest registration: the data Spanish law obliges you to keep in order for the reports is the same data the tax agencies ask for.

Frequently asked questions

Who pays Spain’s tourist taxes, the guest or the lodging? Spain’s tourist taxes are paid by the guest, but the lodging collects, declares and remits them as tax substitute. If you fail to settle, the penalty is yours.

Can I fold the tax into the room price? Folding the tax into the room price is not the norm: tax agencies expect it itemised, charged with the stay but identified as a tax. Check your region’s invoicing rules.

Do children pay? Children do not pay below the threshold each rule sets: in Catalonia under-17s are exempt; in the Balearics, under-16s. Check before configuring charges.

Is there a tourist tax in Madrid or Andalusia? There is no tourist tax in Madrid or Andalusia: as of mid-2026 neither has a regional tax on tourist stays in force.

What happens if I don’t declare the tax? Not declaring the tax is a tax breach, with surcharges and penalties from the relevant agency. Santiago’s case (one in four establishments settling) foreshadows verification campaigns.

This article is informational and is not tax advice. Amounts change often (Catalonia already has another rise scheduled for 2027 and municipal surcharges depend on each ordinance): verify your case with the relevant tax agency before configuring charges.