Forty flats in Corralejo, eleven of them let to tourists for years. A new owner on the third floor wants to make it twelve. The residents want a quieter lift and a pool with fewer suitcases beside it, and the president has read two things in the press: that the Supreme Court annulled «the registry», and that the Canary law «gives five years». Both are true, and neither answers the question the meeting is about to be asked. Three sets of rules meet at the door of that building: the Canary Act that decides whether a home may be let to tourists at all, the registration number that goes on the advert, and the Horizontal Property Act, which says what the owners' meeting may decide. Two of them moved in 2026, and the third had changed the year before. This note sets out where each of them stands on 4 October 2026, for the owner who already lets, for the one who wants to start and for the board. Quotations are in Spanish with the reading in English.
A new holiday let starts at the town hall
The Canary Act on the tourist use of homes (Ley 6/2025) has been in force since 13 December 2025. Under it a holiday let begins with a responsible declaration filed with the Cabildo of the island, and the declaration is only as good as the papers behind it. One of them decides almost everything: a Cédula urbanística acreditativa de la expresa habilitación por el planeamiento urbanístico del uso turístico de hospedaje respecto de la vivienda de que se trate, a planning certificate showing that the town's planning expressly enables tourist lodging in that particular home (article 7.7).
Planning cannot enable it freely. As a rule the enabling of tourist use deberá reservar, como mínimo, el 90 % de la edificabilidad residencial, must reserve at least 90 per cent of the residential floor space, for homes that are not let to tourists (article 4.1), and the homes it does open deben tener una antigüedad mínima de diez años, must be at least ten years old, unless the planning itself shortens that term (article 5.1). Where the planning does not enable it, nothing new can start. The Act's own preamble admits that a town hall's delay in adapting its planning implicaría de facto la imposibilidad de promover la explotación comercial turística de viviendas, would in practice make it impossible to start letting homes to tourists, and its remedy is a fallback: from December 2030 the Cabildo will apply the Act's default rules (transitional provision eight). Those default rules open the door to the detached single-family house (article 5.2), and the Act is explicit about flats: En ningún caso se considerarán aisladas las viviendas independientes existentes en edificios plurifamiliares o pareados sometidos al régimen de propiedad horizontal, in no case are separate homes in multi-family or semi-detached buildings under horizontal property regarded as detached (article 2). As we read it, a flat in a community can become a holiday let only where the municipal planning says so in terms. We have not checked the state of the planning in each of Fuerteventura's six municipalities; the certificate is the town hall's to give, and that is where the question goes first.
When the papers are in order the rest is quick. The declaration permitirá el inicio de la actividad desde el día de su presentación, allows the activity to begin on the day it is filed (article 8.1), and it habilita para el ejercicio de la actividad por el plazo de cinco años, entitles its holder to operate for five years (article 10.1), renewable if the home still meets every requirement. Two consequences follow that owners rarely expect. The Cabildo's notice to the town hall counts as la comunicación previa relativa al cambio de uso urbanístico de la vivienda, de residencial a turístico, the prior notice of the change of the home's planning use, from residential to tourist (article 9.1), a change the owner must also declare to the Cadastre. And the town hall tells the utility companies, so that the tariffs and charges of a tourist use apply.
A holiday let that already exists
Homes registered under the 2015 rules were not switched off. The Act gave them a transitional regime, and in August 2026 an amending Act (Ley 7/2026) added a date to it.
| Your situation |
What the Act gives you |
| You own the flat, you are its registered operator and you let it for more than a year before the Act |
You may declare consolidated tourist use at the town hall until December 2030. It has no end date |
| Any other let that was properly registered |
Five years, to December 2030, and one extension of up to five more if you apply by December 2029 with proof |
| You operate a flat that belongs to someone else |
Until your agreement with the owner ends, within those five years |
| Registered before the Act, but the town hall never received the classified-activity notice |
File the notice before 31 July 2027, or stop |
| The flat is sold |
The consolidated use ends, and the buyer starts from the beginning |
| The flat is inherited |
The heir may take over the declaration, for up to ten years |
The general rule is the second line. Operators dispondrán de un plazo de cinco años para continuar con la explotación de la vivienda vacacional en los términos en los que venían haciéndolo, have five years to go on letting the home on the terms on which they had been doing so (transitional provision two), and when the five years end the activity must stop unless the home has been enabled under the new rules. The first line, the consolidated use, is better and narrower. It has no time limit, but while it lasts la vivienda no será susceptible de ningún uso residencial ni habitacional, the home cannot be put to any residential use, not even by its owner, and it ends with la transmisión de la propiedad de la vivienda por cualquier título, the transfer of ownership of the home by any title (transitional provision one). A flat is no longer sold «with its licence». Since August 2026 the one exception is an inheritance.
The fourth line is the new date. It is for declarations that were filed with the Cabildo while nothing was filed with the town hall. Their holders have until 31 July 2027 to file there the notice that classified activities require, with a municipal certificate and a technician's report, and the consequence of not doing so is written without nuance: el interesado deberá cesar en la actividad turística de manera inmediata, the holder must cease the tourist activity immediately (transitional provision ten).
Thirty-one days
The same amending Act drew a line that reaches flats nobody thinks of as holiday lets. Unless the contrary is proved, tourist letting is presumed when a home is advertised through a tourist channel, or when accommodation is provided in it por un período de tiempo continuo igual o inferior a 31 días, for a continuous period of thirty-one days or less, once or more in the same year (article 11). A short let can still be an ordinary lease, but the landlord has to ask the tenant why the accommodation is needed for that time and write the reason into the contract. If the contract is silent, el mismo tendrá consideración de arrendamiento de naturaleza turística, it is treated as a tourist let (article 12).
For a community this matters more than it seems. A flat let by the week as a «seasonal let», with no registration, is a holiday let in the eyes of the Canary Act, and as we read the two Acts together, what the statutes or the meeting have decided about holiday lets applies to it. A State decree-law of 29 September 2026 had written a thirty-one-day line of its own into the tenancy Act; the Congress repealed it on 2 October, and a second decree-law, Real Decreto-ley 29/2026, wrote it again from 8 October, pending its own vote; the Canary presumption, which is regional law, was not touched by either. What a genuine seasonal let needs is in our sister piece on the seasonal contract, and what fell with the decree in the one on the October decrees.
The number on the advert
From 1 July 2025 a holiday let needed a second number, issued through the Land Registry under a State decree (Real Decreto 1312/2024). The Supreme Court annulled that part of the decree in judgment 620/2026 of 19 May 2026, and in the judgments that followed it: el Estado carece de competencia para dictar las disposiciones del Real Decreto 1312/2024, de 23 de diciembre referidas al procedimiento de registro único de arrendamientos de corta duración, the State has no competence to issue the provisions of the decree on the single registration procedure for short-term lets. What it left standing is the State's digital window, through which the platforms send their data.
The number did not disappear; it changed hands. A European regulation that applies since 20 May 2026 (Regulation (EU) 2024/1028) tells the platforms that, wherever a registration procedure exists, they garantizarán que los anfitriones faciliten un número de registro antes de permitir la oferta de servicios de alquiler de alojamientos de corta duración, shall ensure that hosts provide a registration number before allowing the offer of short-term rental services, and it requires that una unidad no esté sujeta a más de un procedimiento de registro, a unit is not subject to more than one registration procedure. In the Canaries that procedure is the regional one. The Cabildo enters the declaration in the islands' tourist register, and the entry carries un número de registro cuya inclusión será obligatoria en cualquier publicación o anuncio, a registration number that must be included in any publication or advertisement (article 8.6). That is the number to keep on the listing. No provision in force asks for the State number of 2025. How each platform words its form we have not checked; our reading of the regulation is that the Canarian number is the one it has to ask for.
What the meeting can decide
Since 3 April 2025 the Horizontal Property Act speaks about holiday lets in four ways.
- Before starting. An owner who wants to let to tourists deberá obtener previamente la aprobación expresa de la comunidad de propietarios, must first obtain the express approval of the community of owners (article 7.3). A let that begins without it can be ordered to stop: the president demands it, and if that fails the meeting can take the owner to court.
- The majority. The agreement that approves, limits, conditions or prohibits holiday lets requerirá el voto favorable de las tres quintas partes del total de los propietarios que, a su vez, representen las tres quintas partes de las cuotas de participación, needs the favourable vote of three fifths of all the owners who, in turn, hold three fifths of the quotas (article 17.12). The Supreme Court has confirmed that those three fifths can prohibit, not only limit (judgment 1205/2025 of 2 September 2025, repeating its two plenary judgments of 3 October 2024).
- The fees. The same majority can charge more to the flats that let, in special quotas or in a larger share of the common expenses, siempre que estas modificaciones no supongan un incremento superior al 20 %, provided the changes do not mean an increase of more than 20 per cent.
- The past. Article 17.12 ends with a short sentence: Estos acuerdos no tendrán efectos retroactivos, these agreements shall have no retroactive effect. And a provision added in 2025 protects the owner who was already letting under the tourism rules before 3 April 2025, who podrá seguir ejerciendo la actividad con las condiciones y plazos establecidos en la misma, may go on with the activity on the conditions and for the periods those rules lay down (additional provision two).
Put together with the Canary Act, the picture for the block in Corralejo is this. The eleven lets that were registered and running before April 2025 do not need the meeting's permission, and as we read the Act a vote taken now does not close them; their clock is the Canary one, December 2030 unless they qualify for consolidated use. The twelfth needs the meeting's express approval before anything else, and then the town hall's certificate. Two things remain open, and we say so: whether a higher quota voted today can be charged to a let that began before the vote, and how far conditions can be imposed on it. On both we would ask for a lawyer's opinion before the agreement is drafted. A prohibition that was already in the statutes is a different matter: neither rule, as we read them, rescues a let that the statutes forbade.
The three fifths are counted over every owner, not over those who attend. In a building where half the owners live abroad that is the whole difficulty, and the Act gives one help: the votes of absent owners who were properly summoned count as favourable if, once told of the agreement, they no manifiesten su discrepancia mediante comunicación a quien ejerza las funciones de secretario de la comunidad en el plazo de 30 días naturales, do not make their disagreement known to whoever acts as secretary of the community within 30 calendar days (article 17.8). A vote on a rule for the whole building is therefore won in the weeks after the meeting, by notifying well. For an approval that benefits a single flat we would not rely on silence: the Act withholds that help from changes made for one owner's private benefit, and real votes are safer. If the president will not put the matter on the agenda, our note on the extraordinary meeting explains how a quarter of the owners can ask for one.
The certificate the community is asked for
The Canary Act creates no community rule of its own; it sends the matter to the Horizontal Property Act and asks for proof. A declaration for a flat in a community must be accompanied by a certificación o documento acreditativo de la junta de propietarios y propietarias, a certificate or document from the owners' meeting, showing that neither the title, nor the statutes, nor any agreement of the community that binds third parties rules out uses other than a habitual residence (article 7.7). The owner who opts for consolidated use is asked for the same proof, from the Land Registry or by any other means valid in law. The request lands on the secretary's desk, and three things are worth knowing before it does.
- It certifies what the books say. The title, the statutes and the minute book, read in that order. It is a statement of fact, not a favour the board grants or withholds; in the communities we administer the secretary issues it with the president's countersignature.
- Register what the meeting decides. The Horizontal Property Act says of a building's statutes that they no perjudicará a terceros si no ha sido inscrito en el Registro de la Propiedad, shall not prejudice third parties unless entered in the Land Registry (article 5). An agreement that lives only in the minute book invites the argument that a later buyer is not bound by it. A community that votes a limit or a prohibition should take it to the Registry.
- Silence is not approval. A certificate that finds no prohibition is not the express approval that article 7.3 requires for a let that starts after April 2025. As we read the two Acts together, a new let needs both: the meeting's vote and the certificate.
What to do, depending on who you are
- If you already let. Find your declaration and its date. Ask the town hall whether it holds your classified-activity notice and, if it does not, file it before 31 July 2027. Decide before December 2030 whether you can declare consolidated use. Keep the Canarian number on every advert.
- If you want to start. Ask the town hall for the planning certificate first. If the planning allows it, ask the president to put your request on the agenda. Only then file with the Cabildo.
- If you let for weeks without registering. Write the tenant's reason into every contract of thirty-one days or less, or register the flat.
- If you sit on the board. Read the statutes and the minute book before anyone asks for a certificate. If the building wants a rule, take it to a meeting in the wording of article 17.12, notify the absent owners properly and register the result.
What we do in the communities we administer
As secretary and administrator we keep the statutes and the minute book, issue the certificate when an owner needs it, put holiday-let agreements on the agenda in the Act's own wording, count the three fifths against the full list of owners and quotas, notify the absent ones and tell the board when an agreement should go to the Land Registry. We do not manage holiday lets and we are not lawyers; when a question is a lawyer's, we say so. Our earlier note on holiday lets in your community explains the 2025 reform in more detail. The Canary law from the owner's side is in our sister pieces at Olga Caballero & Co. and, with the taxes, at AAA+ Consultants. The service is described on our community administration page, and a community that wants to compare can ask for a quote.
Common questions
Can the community close the holiday lets that already exist in the building?
Not by a vote. Agreements on holiday lets have no retroactive effect, and an owner who was letting under the tourism rules before 3 April 2025 may go on for as long as those rules allow. The exception is a let that the statutes already prohibited.
I registered my flat years ago. Do I have to do anything now?
Yes, two things. Check that the town hall holds your classified-activity notice, and file it before 31 July 2027 if it does not. And see before December 2030 whether you can declare consolidated use; otherwise the registration ends then.
Do I still need the State registration number?
No provision in force requires it since the Supreme Court annulled the State's registration procedure in May 2026. The number that must appear on every advert is the one of the Canary tourist register.
I let my flat for three weeks at a time. Is that a holiday let?
In the Canaries it is presumed to be one, since August 2026, whenever the stay is thirty-one days or less. The presumption falls if the contract records why the tenant needs temporary accommodation.
Can the community charge holiday lets more?
Yes: by three fifths of all the owners and quotas, up to 20 per cent more in special quotas or in the share of common expenses, and never retroactively.
