Gavin Grey: UK correspondent on Spain shutting down over 65,000 Airbnb listings as part of rental crackdown

More than 65,000 Airbnb listings in Spain are set to be shut down amid a row over runaway house prices in the country.

The Government has come under increasing pressure to tame a surge in house prices and rents, which have doubled in less than a decade in some tourism hotspots.

Airbnb listings have been partly blamed for swallowing up the housing stock in cities such as Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia - and mass protests have started up ahead of the summer season.

UK correspondent Gavin Grey says many young people have been locked out of the housing market as a result of over-tourism - and there's growing calls for change. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Devin Gray Are UK correspondence with the say, Gevin Hi
there he all right, So what is it going to take.
What does Israel need to do in order to get
these free trade negotiations with the UK going again?

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Basically to stop the bombing and action in Gaza. That's
the message from this UK government. So yesterday they paused
the trade talks with Israel, they summoned the ambassador and
started to put sanctions on individuals, and today we've learned
more about those sanctions. Daniella Weiss is her name, the

(00:33):
main one. You may never have heard of her, but
she's a far right Israeli settler known as the godmother
to the settler movement. With settlers, of course, this is
the part of an organization called Homeland that has been
sanctioned by this government as well. Vice leads that group,
and the vast majority of the international community considers the

(00:54):
settlers illegal under international law. In other words, they're occupying
world the land that's not there, and this is something
that Vice has been absolutely instrumental in doing. The Israeli
Foreign Ministry, though, has hit back saying the sanctions are
basically unjustified and regrettable and say that the UK's pause

(01:15):
of trade talks. Well, they're saying, if you want to
harm your economy, that's up to you. But this is
an anti Israel obsession, they're calling it. The UK government though,
saying the situation in Gaza is quite simply untenable and
cannot go on any longer. And yes, they issued a
joint statement with France and Canada saying they will keep

(01:36):
some concrete steps if things don't change.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, I hope. So, okay, listen, what's gone wrong with
these airbnb properties in Spain.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, one of the big issues for young people in
Spain has been trying to find somewhere to live, and
particularly the larger towns and cities. The average rental has
doubled over the last decade. Salaries, though are way behind,
They're nowhere near that, so accommodation has become very expensive,
and they do say one of the things that has

(02:05):
priced them out is that so many apartments in those
towns and cities have been turned into airbnb or tourist apartments.
Spain is the world's second most popular tourist destination after France,
with ninety four million foreign visitors last year, and this
government's Pedro Sanchez, the Socialist Prime Minister, is alert to that.

(02:26):
He's saying there are too many Airbnbs and not enough homes.
So they are now calling for the removal of the
listings of nearly sixty six thousand properties on the rental
platform Airbnb, saying that they breach regulations for tourist accommodation.
They're saying they quote violated various norms regarding housing for

(02:46):
tourist use. It's a complicated one and it's a bit
vague and why they think they can do it. But
already we've seen Madrid court ruling that Airbnb must immediately
withdraw from the market almost five thousand of the cited
by the ministry there. But it's not just Madrid, it's
Andrew Luthia, Catalonia, Valencia, the Basque Country and the Ballyeric

(03:08):
Islands all now tackling Airbnb, saying that there are too
many Airbnb properties and this cannot go on. Now.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Ryanair cannot be serious that they're wanting some people, some
of their staff, to pay back money. Are they?

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Oh? Yes, yes, I think Ryanair is extremely serious about this. Well,
what happened is a pay rise was agreed with a
Spanish union, and that pay rise was then applied to
all flight attendants of Ryanair, which is Europe's largest airline.
It's the budget airline based out of Ireland, and that

(03:44):
belonged that that pay increase belonged to all flight attendants,
regardless of which union they belonged to. Now, interestingly, another
Spanish union one a court case a couple of months ago,
nullifying the deal, saying that it wasn't fairly done. That
you know, you can't just talk to one union and
not to the rest of us, so it's nullified. The

(04:05):
deal mean, the pay rise is effectively null and void.
So Ryanair is now saying, right, thank you, we'll have
that pay rise money back. Airline workers basically estimate that
they're three thousand euros overpaid if you like, using Ryanair's language,
so roughly six thousand New Zealand dollars or more. And yeah,

(04:29):
the flight's attendants are being told they must repay the
money over a year by taking a sum out of
their monthly salary. This, as you can imagine, has been
described as fascicaled by one union. Another union isn't happy,
but either way, Ryanair not terribly popular with the unions.
In Spain as they do try to keep their ticket
prices down by doing tough deals on pay rising.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Interesting. Hey, thank you very much, Givin Gray Agavin, we'll
rule check to you in a couple of days. As
Kevin Gray are UK correspondent.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
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