Spain’s Supreme Court strikes down the NRUA: you no longer need the national number to list your flat

At a glance

• On 19 May 2026 Spain’s Supreme Court annulled the Single Rental Registry created by Royal Decree 1312/2024. The ruling was published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) on 8 June.
• The reason is constitutional: central government has no power to create its own registry on top of the tourist registries run by the regions.
• The national registration number (NRUA, also called NRA) is no longer mandatory, and platforms cannot demand it to publish your listing.
• Everything regional and local still applies: your tourist licence or registration, the approval of your owners’ association where required, and guest registration.

For almost a year, listing a flat on Airbnb or Booking in Spain meant doing the same paperwork twice: registering with the tourist registry of your autonomous community, and then obtaining a national number from the Land Registry. From 1 July 2025, platforms had to take your listing down if the second number was missing.

That double requirement is over. The Supreme Court has sided with the regional government of Valencia and struck down the national registry. Here is what the ruling says and what it means for you as an owner.

What the Supreme Court decided

On 19 May 2026 the Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court handed down ruling 620/2026, partially upholding the appeal brought by the Generalitat Valenciana against Royal Decree 1312/2024 of 23 December¹. The judiciary’s press office announced it on 21 May under a headline that leaves little room for doubt: the court annulled the Single Registry of short-term rentals “because it considers that the State lacks the competence to create it”². The ruling was published in the BOE on 8 June 2026³.

The decree does not fall in its entirety. What goes is everything that built the single registry and the number that had to appear in listings:

Provisions annulled, as listed in published analyses of the ruling^1,4.

Why it was annulled: a question of powers

The court did not assess whether the registry was useful. It asked whether central government had the power to create it, and concluded that it did not. The Government had relied on three provisions of the Spanish Constitution, and the court rejected each of them¹:

• Article 149.1.8 (organisation of public registries). It does not apply, because the single registry was not a civil property register but an administrative tool tied to housing and tourism, both of which fall to the regions.
• Article 149.1.13 (basic rules and coordination of the economy). It lets the State set basic rules and coordinate, not regulate in full detail a complete procedure that overlaps existing regional registries.
• Article 149.1.1 (equal exercise of rights). It does not support such an exhaustive scheme either.

None of this came out of the blue. In its opinion of 18 December 2024, five days before the decree was approved, the Council of State had already warned about the registry’s constitutional problems^4,5.

Central government can coordinate and pool information. What it cannot do is create a second registry for the same flat.

Our summary of the core reasoning in ruling 620/2026

Nor did EU law require a national registry. Regulation (EU) 2024/1028, which the decree claimed to implement, requires a registration system wherever short-term rentals are regulated, but leaves each country free to decide at which level it is run. In Spain that level already existed: the regional tourist registries.

From mandatory number to annulment

1. 11 April 2024

   The EU Regulation is adopted

   Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 sets rules for collecting and sharing short-term rental data.

2. 23 December 2024

   Royal Decree 1312/2024

   It creates the Single Rental Registry and the Digital Single Window. It comes into force on 2 January 2025⁶.

3. 1 July 2025

   The number becomes mandatory

   Platforms must request the registration number and remove listings without one.

4. September 2025

   First mass removals

   The Housing Ministry notifies platforms of more than 53,500 listings without a number so that they are taken down⁷.

5. 19 May 2026

   Ruling 620/2026

   The Supreme Court annuls the single registry. The EU Regulation starts to apply the following day.

6. 8 June 2026

   Published in the BOE

   The ruling is published and the annulment takes general effect.

What changes for you

In practice it is simple: you no longer need to obtain or keep the national registration number to advertise your property, and no platform can take your listing down for not having one. If you did obtain it, there is nothing you need to do with it.

The annual filing of rental data with the Land Registry also falls away, because it was part of the same registration procedure⁸. If you are unsure about your own situation, it is sensible to check with your property manager or a lawyer.

What is still required

The ruling removes a piece of paperwork, not the rules on holiday lets. Everything that depends on your region and your town hall stays exactly as it was:

• Your regional tourist licence or registration. This is what allows you to let by the night, and its code is the identifier platforms ask for: VUT in Andalusia (formerly VFT), HUT in Catalonia or ETV in the Balearics, among others. See the region-by-region breakdown in our licence guide.
• Your owners’ association approval. Since 3 April 2025, starting to let a flat to tourists requires the prior, express approval of the building’s owners by a three-fifths majority of owners and shares (article 17.12 of the Horizontal Property Act)⁹. Flats that already held a licence before that date are not affected.
• Local planning rules. Many cities cap new licences by neighbourhood.
• Guest registration. Reporting your guests’ details through SES.Hospedajes remains compulsory.

Oversight does not disappear either. The ruling keeps the Digital Single Window for Rentals and the platforms’ duty to send data to the authorities for coordination and statistics under the EU Regulation². And regional governments can still ask platforms to remove listings that have no tourist licence.

What Airbnb and Booking ask for now

Since the ruling, platforms no longer require the national number to publish a listing. What they ask for is the code from your regional tourist registry, which is the valid identifier for both the platforms and the authorities^4,10.

1. Check the registration field in your listing

   On Airbnb it sits in your listing settings, under registration details. On Booking, it is in the property’s legal information in the extranet.

2. Make sure your regional code is shown

   It should be the number of your tourist licence or registration, written exactly as it appears on your approval.

3. If your listing was removed only for lacking the national number, ask for it to be reinstated

   With your regional licence in order there is no reason to keep it blocked. Contact the platform’s support team and give them your code.

Can you get back what you paid to register?

The ruling does not order an automatic refund of registration fees, and so far neither the Government nor the Association of Registrars has set up a simple way to claim them⁵. The available route is a state liability claim, in which you would need to prove a specific, quantifiable loss.

The general deadline to claim compensation after a regulation is annulled is one year from publication of the ruling (article 67.1 of Law 39/2015). For a single flat the amount is usually small compared with the cost of claiming, so weigh it up with a lawyer before you act.

What we recommend doing now

If your regional licence is in order, the ruling saves you work. Use that time on what actually moves your income:

• Check that your regional code appears correctly on every platform.
• If your listing was blocked for weeks, look at where it now ranks. A long pause costs visibility, and it is worth relaunching with strong photos, copy and pricing. We explain why in why your listing loses visibility.
• Review your pricing for the season ahead: every night left empty by a badly set price is money you never get back.

Want to know what your listing is missing?

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Sources

1. Iberley. La nulidad del Registro Único Estatal de Arrendamientos (analysis of ruling STS 620/2026, ECLI:ES:TS:2026:2148), in Spanish.
2. General Council of the Judiciary, press release of 21 May 2026. El Tribunal Supremo anula el Registro Único de arrendamientos de corta duración, in Spanish.
3. Alquiler Vivienda Vacacional. La nulidad del Registro Único de arrendamientos: preguntas y respuestas, in Spanish.
4. Garrigues, Hospitality & Leisure Law Blog. The Supreme Court annuls the Single Registry for Vacation Rentals.
5. Alejandro Fuentes-Lojo, Hay Derecho (1 July 2026). La anulación por el Tribunal Supremo del Registro Único de Arrendamientos de corta duración, in Spanish.
6. BOE. Royal Decree 1312/2024 of 23 December, in Spanish.
7. idealista/news (15 September 2025). El Gobierno notifica más de 53.500 pisos turísticos ilegales para que se retiren sus anuncios, in Spanish.
8. Chekin. Real Decreto 1312/2024: qué cambia tras anularse el NRUA, in Spanish.
9. BOE. Law 49/1960 on Horizontal Property, article 17.12, as amended by Organic Law 1/2025, in Spanish.
10. Net2rent. El Tribunal Supremo anula el NRUA: qué cambia para tu agencia, in Spanish.

This article is for information only and is not legal advice. Last reviewed on 25 September 2026.