Cantabria, Spain: funds and companies push small owners out of holiday rentals

Cantabria: the PP opens the door to funds, pushing small owners out of holiday rentals

Who gets to run holiday rentals in Cantabria? The answer taking shape is clear: companies and funds, not individuals. The rules approved last year in the Boletín Oficial de Cantabria (the region's official gazette) have peine the door to a new dynamic that is pushing small property owners out of the tourism business.

A pincer movement between regional government and town councils

The regional government, led by the PP (Spain's conservative People's Party), has pushed through changes that favour legal entities. The most recent example is the conversion of the Franciscan building on Perines street into 24 tourist apartments. Meanwhile, town councils have in some cases rejected projects, but the regional ministry has stepped in 'in extremis' to save tourist apartment schemes that had already been turned down. It is a pincer movement: the government clears the way, the councils put up obstacles, but in the end the logic of accumulation prevails.

The professionalisation argument

Some argue that the sector needs to professionalise and that one company managing 100 properties is more efficient than 100 individual owners. But the flip side is that this efficiency translates into ownership being concentrated in the hands of funds, which operate on speculative logic and short-term dividends. Small owners cannot compete with those volumes.

The parties' contradictions

Los Cantabristas, a regional party, for example opposes projects like the eight tourist lodgings in rural land at Liencres, yet at the same time defends a primary sector that suffers harassment from the administration. It is the dog in the manger. And meanwhile, right and left seem to agree on not defending families' assets.

In the end, the fragmentation that was once a strength becomes a weakness. Those applauding the measures against tourist apartments may not realise they are applauding the sharks. In Cantabria, the PP has sounded the starting gun.