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 September 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.
• Guests aged 16 or under 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. 1 October 2026 is the date the surcharge becomes chargeable, not an approval deadline: where your municipality already has a published ordinance, it is charged from that date with nothing further to do. Find yours in your province’s official gazette, read the amount for your category and load it into the booking engine and the invoice before 1 October; where no ordinance has been published, nothing is charged.
• 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.

Who answers for the tax and how it is invoiced is also set by law. The tax substitute is whoever operates the establishment, and Law 5/2017 presumes, unless proven otherwise, that this is the holder of the tourism licence: if you manage other people’s dwellings, the ATC looks first at whoever is named as licence holder, unless it is shown that someone else operates it⁵. And the tax is never folded into the price:

“The tax substitute must record on the invoice issued to its customers, separately from the consideration for its services, the amount of the tax due, stating the number of stay units and the rate applied.”

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, in euros per person per day of stay or fraction⁶:

• 4 EUR: 5-star, gran lujo and superior 4-star hotels; 4-key and superior 4-key apartments.
• 3 EUR: 4-star and superior 3-star hotels; superior 3-key apartments.
• 2 EUR: dwellings marketed for tourist use and holiday tourist dwellings; hotels and apartments of one to three stars or keys; rural hotels and agroturismos.
• 1 EUR: hostales, pensiones, campsites, albergues and refugios.

On that gross quota the same article applies two rebates, 75% in low season and 50% from the ninth day of a stay at the same establishment. Under-16s are exempt, as are force-majeure stays, health-motivated stays (for the patient and their companions, where the care is part of the Balearic public health service’s catalogue) and stays subsidised by the social programmes of EU public administrations⁶. The tax is demanded from the guest at any point before the stay ends, with a receipt for the charge, and settled with the Balearic agency (ATIB)⁷. Low season is defined by the law itself, not by the tourist calendar:

“For the purposes of the rebate referred to in letter a) of the previous paragraph, low season means the period between 1 November of each year and 30 April of the following year.”

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 season⁸.

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 it⁶. January and February fall squarely within the article 13.3 low season and pay 25% of the quota, and the official ITS calculator applies exactly those rates⁸. 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 in the tourist zones of Decreto ley 1/2020 and the fight against illegal tourist supply, letters e) and g)⁹. 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 2027¹⁰¹¹¹². It taxes the stay by days or fractions, with or without an overnight, capped at six days per person and continuous stay, and all three rules set the same bands by lodging type, in euros per person per day, which each municipality fixes by fiscal ordinance¹⁰:

Three details worth noting now:

• Under-18s are exempt, as are people with a disability of 65% or more or grade II or III dependency (with one companion), health-motivated stays, force-majeure stays, those of students and researchers, and stays subsidised by EU or EEA public social programmes¹⁰.
• The tax is not chargeable on bookings formalised before 5 February 2026, even if the stay falls in 2027¹⁰.
• The ordinance can rebate the quota by up to 100% in municipalities with 25 lodging places or fewer, or with tourist intensity below 1% and no more than 75 places, and add up to 50% in those with 750 places or more, or 5,000 or more inhabitants with tourist intensity of 10% or above¹⁰. Do not configure 2027 prices without checking it.

And if your town hall reaches 1 January 2027 without a fiscal ordinance, there is no gap:

“Should the tax rates provided for in article 9 not have been set by the relevant fiscal ordinance on the date this Norma Foral takes effect, the maximum rates established for each type of tourist lodging establishment shall apply.”

For a tourist-use dwelling that means 6.50 EUR per person per day from the first quarter of 2027.

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 exemptions¹³. 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, A Coruña and Vigo 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 is a single sentence:

“A rebate of 100% is established.”

So the regional government collects nothing. What the guest pays is the municipal surcharge of article 24, which each council may approve by ordinance as “a percentage of up to a maximum of 100% of the gross quota of the tax before applying the rebate”¹⁴.

So wherever the council switches the surcharge on, what gets charged is up to the tariff in article 16 of the Galician law: each ordinance sets the percentage of the gross quota, with 100% as the ceiling, and Santiago and A Coruña apply the maximum. Per person and day¹⁴:

• 2.50 EUR: superior 5-star, 5-star and superior 4-star hotels.
• 2 EUR: 4-star, superior 3-star, 3-star and superior 2-star hotels; tourist-use dwellings (VUT).
• 1.50 EUR: 2-star, superior 1-star and 1-star hotels; pensiones.
• 1 EUR: hostels, campsites, rural tourism, tourist apartments and tourist dwellings.

Five days maximum are counted per stay. Unemancipated minors, people with a disability of 65% or more, stays subsidised by EU public social programmes and stays at youth hostels and the public Xacobeo hostels are exempt; 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 services, as do those of federated athletes at official competitions and force-majeure stays¹⁴.

Santiago de Compostela and A Coruña have charged it since the last quarter of 2025¹⁵. Vigo is the third, and it is no longer a plan: after the provisional approval of 25 May 2026¹⁶, the plenary gave the ordinance definitive approval on 7 September and the full text appeared in the BOPPO of 11 September. The surcharge applies to stays from 1 October 2026¹⁷.

Vigo does not go to the 100% Santiago and A Coruña apply: its ordinance sets the surcharge at 72.75% of the gross quota in article 16, so the figures are lower¹⁷. Per person and day or part of a day:

• 1.82 EUR: superior 5-star, 5-star and superior 4-star hotels.
• 1.46 EUR: 4-star, superior 3-star, 3-star and superior 2-star hotels; tourist-use dwellings (VUT).
• 1.09 EUR: 2-star, superior 1-star and 1-star hotels; pensiones; cruise stays.
• 0.73 EUR: hostels, campsites, rural tourism, tourist apartments and tourist dwellings.

Three details change the first year’s arithmetic¹⁷:

1. Only the first two nights are charged until 30 June 2027. The first transitional provision applies a 0% surcharge to the third, fourth and fifth night, and the five-night count does not start until 1 July 2027.
2. Cruise stays are out until that same date: the surcharge on a stay aboard a cruise ship does not apply until 1 July 2027.
3. Filing is half-yearly through the council’s electronic office, by 31 July for the first half and by 31 January of the following year for the second. October, November and December 2026 are declared by 31 January 2027.

If you run a tourist-use dwelling in Vigo, this month’s job is to load 1.46 EUR per person per night, capped at two nights per stay, into the booking engine and into what the guest is charged, effective for stays starting on or after 1 October, and to keep the declaraciones responsables of anyone claiming an exemption.

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 occupancy¹⁵. Translation: administrations are already looking at who declares and who does not, and cross-checking against lodging registries is trivial.

Where Spain has no tourist tax: rejections, debates, 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 day¹⁸. The Canary Islands High Court annulled the ordinance in a judgment of 9 July 2026, not published, for failing to specify which services it financed, that is, for disguising a tax as a fee, according to Canarias7¹⁹. 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 frozen²⁰. 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 not²¹²².
• 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 effect²³. 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 without itemising it is not the rule: the tax is charged with the stay, but identified as a tax. In Catalonia, Law 5/2017 (article 35.1) requires it to be recorded on the invoice separately from the price of the service, with the number of stays and the rate applied; in the Balearics, Law 2/2016 (articles 10 and 11) requires it to be demanded from the guest before the stay ends, with a receipt for the charge handed over.

Do children pay? Children do not pay below the threshold each rule sets: in Catalonia guests aged 16 or under are exempt; in the Balearics, under-16s; in Galicia, unemancipated minors; in the Basque Country, from 2027, under-18s.

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.