Girona Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Girona and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that short-term letting is legal in Catalonia, and 762 homes in the city of Girona held a tourist-use licence in 2025 according to Idescat's establishment statistics. Unfortunately, the rest of the news is a good deal worse, because you almost certainly cannot join them. Girona has not been able to accept a new tourist-flat application since November 2023, and it still can't in 2026.

That block isn't a local mood, mind you, it's Catalan law. Decret llei 3/2023 put tourist-use dwellings in 262 Catalan municipalities behind a prior urban planning licence, and Girona sits at number 90 in its annex. The city's own activities page then answers the question in capital letters: new HUT applications cannot be admitted until the planning rules are adapted to the decree. The reason is close to an accident of timing, since Girona's tourist-flat planning rules were approved four weeks before the decree took effect and don't say what it now requires them to say. Existing licence holders sit in the same gap, mind you, because they need that licence before November 2028 and the city can't issue one yet.

So let's walk through what's genuinely left here: what Catalonia counts as a tourist flat, which routes are still open, what the paperwork costs, the taxes you'll be collecting and remitting, how hard the city pushes on enforcement, and who to call when something doesn't add up. Everything below covers the city of Girona, capital of the province of Girona in Catalonia, and it comes from the Ajuntament's, the Generalitat's and the Spanish state's own pages, checked in July 2026.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Girona, Spain?

Those official pages all lean on three different words for three different businesses, so it's worth getting them straight before anything else, because picking the wrong one sends you down a procedure that will never end in a licence.

Figure	What it is	Capacity	Status in Girona, 2026
Habitatge d'ús turístic (HUT)	Whole dwelling let for 31 days or fewer	Up to 15 places, capped by the cèdula	New applications not admitted
Llar compartida	Rooms in the holder's own home, holder present	4 tourist places in total	Allowed in principle, subject to the sector cap
Apartament turístic	A whole building or block run as one business	Set by the licence	Counted inside the same sector cap

A HUT is the figure most people mean by "Airbnb". The Generalitat defines it as a dwelling ceded to third parties for payment for a stay of 31 days or fewer in conditions of immediate availability, and the same page is blunt that the dwelling goes whole. Letting it out room by room is not permitted under this figure.

It also needs a cèdula d'habitabilitat, it can never be occupied by more people than the cèdula allows, and 15 places is the hard ceiling regardless. On top of that you owe guests and neighbours a 24-hour assistance phone, a visible display of your NIRTC registration number and maximum capacity, and the building's rules of coexistence in Catalan, Spanish, English and French at minimum.

Renting rooms is a separate figure with separate rules. A llar compartida is the holder's main and effective residence, capacity is four tourist places in total, and the holder has to be registered at the address, live there, and physically share the home with the guests for the duration of the stay. The Generalitat says so in as many words: tourist letting of rooms is not permitted while the holder is absent.

Sitting on top of the tourism rules is the planning layer, and in Girona that's Modificació Puntual del PGOU número 82, approved definitively by the Comissió Territorial d'Urbanisme de Girona on 11 October 2023 and published in DOGC 9028. Its article 111_ter 2 carries the number that decides most cases. The sum of tourist-use dwellings, shared homes and tourist apartments cannot exceed 15% of the dwellings in any sector of the city, with fractions rounded down, and dwellings inside the Barri Vell special plan are measured against that perimeter rather than the wider district.

That percentage moves, which is why timing matters. The city recalculates it from Unitat Municipal d'Anàlisi Territorial data every quarter, on 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October, and assesses applications in registry order against whichever report is current. Do check the city's own HUT map for your sector before you assume anything, since a sector already over the line is a hard no whatever else is true.

Three more conditions in the same modification trip people up. Tourist use only goes where the plan already admits residential use, so a commercial-zone ground floor is out. HUTs and shared homes count toward the plot's density and cannot push it past the maximum. And nothing in this family can go on land reserved for protected housing, or into a building sitting "fora d'ordenació". Those three are absolutes.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Girona

Unfortunately for most people reading this, that 15% ceiling is the least of your problems, because the door in front of it is bolted shut. Girona cannot admit a new HUT application at all, and it won't be able to until it passes a planning modification that satisfies Decret llei 3/2023. I could find no municipal publication setting a date for that, so treat the reopening as unknown rather than imminent. There's no queue to join.

The stock reflects it. Girona city peaked at 866 licensed tourist dwellings in 2019 and was down to 762 by 2025 on Idescat's figures, covering 4,192 places. Licences leave the market when holders shut down, and nothing replaces them, so the count only falls.

Four routes remain, and they are not equally attractive:

• Buy a property that already carries a habilitació. This is the realistic way into the Girona HUT market, since the change of holder is an ordinary Canal Empresa procedure rather than a new application. Keep in mind what you're actually buying, though, because the transitional regime in Decret llei 3/2023 gives every existing HUT five years from 9 November 2023 to obtain the new urban planning licence or cease the activity, and the city currently cannot issue it.
• Register a llar compartida and rent rooms. The decree targets tourist-use dwellings, and the city's freeze wording names HUTs only, so the shared-home figure looks like the one door still open. It costs you your privacy, mind you: you have to live there, be registered there, and be in the house while guests are.
• Let for 32 nights or more. Anything above 31 days falls outside the tourism regime entirely. Be aware that Girona is a declared zona de mercat residencial tensat under Resolució TER/800/2024, so seasonal and long lets here run into Catalonia's rent containment rules rather than free pricing.
• Build or buy a regulated establishment. Hotels, hostals and pensions are a different use class with their own planning conditions, and MPGU 82 admits them in more zones than it admits HUTs. That is a capital-intensive answer to a question most single-flat owners are not asking.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Girona

Assuming you're able to find a property that already holds a habilitació, or you decide to go the shared-home route instead, you still need to understand how the licence itself is created, because two administrations each hold a piece of it.

The paperwork starts with you and ends with the Generalitat. You file a comunicació through Canal Empresa using a digital certificate, the Ajuntament de Girona processes the municipal habilitació and charges its fee, and once the city communicates the definitive data the Registre de Turisme de Catalunya issues your NIRTC. That number is what goes on the plate by your door and into every advertisement.

Girona's fee for the activity itself sits in the 2026 fiscal ordinances, approved definitively on 23 December 2025. Under the ordinance covering environmental prevention and control of activities, an habitatge d'ús turístic is charged a flat 296,14 €, which is the same as the up-to-50 m² band and well under the 473,85 € and 592,33 € charged to larger premises. The fee buys the document review plus the first technical inspection the city thinks necessary. That is the whole municipal cost.

Now the part that stops a new application dead. In municipalities covered by Decret llei 3/2023, the Generalitat says the comunicació cannot even be filed until a favourable prior urban planning licence exists, and where a municipality has suspended habilitacions the communication "constarà com a no presentada" and carries no legal effect whatsoever.

Filing anyway doesn't buy you a queue position. It buys you nothing.

The decree also reshapes what a licence is once Girona can issue them again. The urban planning licence lasts five years and is renewable for equal periods, so the old idea of a permanent tourist-flat right is gone. A municipality may grant at most 10 HUT licences per 100 inhabitants, and it may only do so once its planning expressly declares tourist use compatible with residential use.

For anyone already operating, the clock is the thing to diarise. Every existing HUT in the 262 affected municipalities has five years from the decree's entry into force on 9 November 2023 to obtain the new licence or cease trading, which lands the deadline in November 2028. A single five-year extension can be requested where the holder proves the transitional regime doesn't compensate the loss of the title, and that decision belongs to the municipality. Remember that the extension is discretionary and singular, so building a purchase model on it is a bet, not a plan.

Required Documents for Girona Short-Term Rentals

Since that 296,14 € doesn't come back and the procedure is entirely online, it's worth getting the file complete before you open the form. The Generalitat runs everything through Canal Empresa with a personal or company digital certificate, and the municipality reviews what you upload.

• A cèdula d'habitabilitat, and a place count that never exceeds what it states.
• The owner's authorisation, where the person filing is not the owner of the dwelling.
• Proof of empadronament and effective residence for a llar compartida, which is the substantive test rather than a formality.
• The 24-hour assistance phone, given to guests and to neighbours, for immediate handling of queries and incidents.
• Your NIRTC display, shown visibly along with the maximum capacity and that assistance number, and repeated in your advertising.
• The community's rules of coexistence, handed to guests in Catalan, Spanish, English and French at minimum.

Two of those are worth dwelling on because they get enforced rather than filed. Advertising a Catalan tourist dwelling without the NIRTC in the listing is an infringement in its own right under the tourism law, and the missing exterior plate and missing 24-hour phone sign were among the most common findings in the Mossos d'Esquadra inspection campaign discussed further down. Make sure both are physically in place before your first guest arrives. Not after your first complaint.

Girona Short-Term Rental Taxes

Once the paperwork is behind you and you're able to take bookings, there's still a tax stack to set up, and it runs across three different administrations. Here's how the layers sit for a Girona tourist dwelling in 2026.

Charge	Rate	Collected and remitted by
Impost sobre les estades en establiments turístics (HUT, outside Barcelona)	1,75 € per person per night, rising to 2,50 € from 1 April 2027	You, to the Agència Tributària de Catalunya
Possible municipal surcharge	Up to 4,00 € per person per night, only for stays from 1 October 2026	The ATC, on the city's behalf, if Girona approves one
IRNR (non-resident income tax)	19% for EU, Iceland and Norway residents; 24% for everyone else	You, via Modelo 210 to the AEAT
IVA	Exempt for a plain let; 10% where hotel-type services are provided	You, to the AEAT

The tourist tax is the one that touches every booking. Llei 2/2026, de 6 de març took effect on 1 April 2026 and set the tariff for a tourist dwelling outside Barcelona city at 1,75 € per person per night, moving to 2,50 € on 1 April 2027. Barcelona's equivalent runs at 9,50 € once its surcharge is added, which is a useful reminder of how much room the law leaves a city that wants to use it.

The mechanics are straightforward once you've done one return. The Agència Tributària de Catalunya caps the taxable base at seven units of stay per person for a continuous stay, and exempts under-17s along with qualifying health-related stays, publicly subsidised social stays and force majeure. Filing sits squarely with the establishment holder, using models 950, 940 or 920. Two windows a year: 1 to 20 April covers the previous October to March, and 1 to 20 October covers April to September.

That same law let every Catalan municipality except Barcelona create its own surcharge of up to 4,00 € per person per night, chargeable only for stays from 1 October 2026 even where the ordinance passes earlier. Going through Girona's 2026 fiscal ordinances and its tax news page, I could not find an approved surcharge, so as of July 2026 the 1,75 € Generalitat tariff is what a Girona host charges. Watch out for this one changing, though. The decision belongs to a council that has spent three years tightening tourist-flat policy, and the ATC would collect any surcharge inside the same six-monthly return.

Income tax works differently depending on where you live and what you do for guests. The AEAT treats tourist letting as rendimientos del capital inmobiliario in the ordinary case, and reclassifies it as economic-activity income where you provide hotel-type services or engage at least one full-time employee. Cleaning between guests and changing linen at check-in and check-out don't count as hotel services, whereas permanent reception, cleaning and linen changes during the stay, laundry and meals do. That same line decides your VAT: a plain let is exempt, a let with hotel services is taxed at 10%.

Non-residents have their own return. Modelo 210 is filed in the first twenty calendar days of April, July, October and January, at 19% with directly related expenses deductible if you live in the EU, Iceland or Norway, and at 24% on gross with nothing deductible otherwise. That gap is worth modelling before you buy.

One local charge catches people who budgeted for a home rather than a business. Girona's waste ordinance says a HUT is billed on the B1 business tariff calculated from maximum daily volume, not on the ordinary household rate, so your rubbish bill changes the day the activity starts.

Spain Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Above Catalonia sits a Spanish and European layer that has moved more in the last eighteen months than in the previous decade, and one of those moves was argued by a Girona association.

Guest reporting is the one with teeth in daily operations. Real Decreto 933/2021 requires lodging providers to collect guest data and transmit it to the authorities "de manera inmediata, y en todo caso en un plazo no superior a 24 horas", by telematic means, and its scope expressly reaches tourist dwellings and the digital platforms that intermediate the booking. Records stay on file for three years from the end of the service. Failing to make those communications was one of the leading findings in the Catalan police inspection campaign. This one gets checked.

The Spanish state also tried to build a national short-term rental registry, and it lost. Real Decreto 1312/2024 created the Registro Único de Arrendamientos with a national registration number, and the Tribunal Supremo struck much of it down in sentencia 629/2026 of 21 May 2026, published in the BOE on 26 June 2026. The action was brought by APARTUR of Barcelona and the Associació Turística d'Apartaments de Girona.

Articles 2.f), 2.i), 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 12.b) went, along with the references to the single-registry procedure and its registration number elsewhere in the decree. The practical upshot for a Girona listing is that the number platforms need to see is still the Catalan NIRTC.

Europe arrived on 20 May 2026, which is the date Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 started applying. It requires registration procedures to be fully online and gives each property a single unique registration number. Platforms then have to display and verify that number, run random checks for illegal listings, and report monthly stay and night data to a national Single Digital Entry Point. Authorities can also demand that non-compliant listings come down. In a city that already blocks new licences and already tracks listings, that regime hands the enforcement side better data rather than giving hosts anything.

Does Girona Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Better data is exactly what Girona has been using. The city detected 50 illegal tourist apartments during 2025, 15 between January and June and 35 more between July and October, after 55 in 2024, working from the Generalitat's Talk&Code tracking tool. That reporting comes from the Catalan News Agency rather than a municipal press release, so treat the exact counts as journalism, though the mechanism behind them is documented on the Generalitat's own side.

The tool matches listings on booking platforms against the official registry, and the Direcció General de Turisme has trained more than thirty municipal inspection teams to use it. During 2024 alone the Generalitat required platforms to remove 3,351 illegal accommodation adverts across Catalonia. Girona flags the cases and refers them, and the Generalitat runs the sanctioning file, since the tourism law gives both administrations control and sanctioning power.

Two authorities, one target.

There are physical inspections too. In the July 2024 Mossos d'Esquadra campaign, coordinated with the tourism inspectorate, officers carried out 158 HUT inspections in a single week and raised 92 infraction reports, of which 14 inspections and 10 infraction reports fell in the Girona police region. The commonest findings were operating without the HUT activity licence, failing to report guests to the police, no 24-hour phone sign and no identifying plate outside the property.

What that costs is set by Llei 13/2002, de turisme de Catalunya. Article 89.a treats providing tourist services without the conditions needed for the corresponding habilitació as a very serious infringement. Article 94 then grades the money: up to 3.000 € for minor infringements, 3.001 to 30.000 € for serious ones, and 30.001 to 600.000 € for very serious ones. At the top band the Generalitat can also suspend the activity or close the establishment temporarily for up to two years, or close it for good.

Two smaller provisions do a lot of work there. The law insists that a sanction never end up cheaper than compliance, and a repeat within a year bumps the infringement up a class. The Cambra de la Propietat Urbana de Girona gives its members the same three numbers, which is a fair sign of how the local market reads them.

One structural detail matters more than the headline figures. Under the tourism law the owner of a tourist dwelling and the manager running it are jointly liable. Handing over the keys does not hand over the exposure.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Girona

That shared exposure is one reason to work through this in order rather than by instinct, since the first two steps below are the ones that save you a purchase you'd regret.

1. Ask for the NIRTC before you ask anything else. A Girona property either already holds a tourist habilitació or it does not, and no fee or lawyer changes that in 2026. Get the number in writing and confirm it against the Registre de Turisme de Catalunya.
2. Check your sector against the 15% ceiling on the city's HUT map, and remember the count is refreshed quarterly from UMAT data, so a sector can move between your enquiry and your file.
3. Read the community's statutes. Catalan communities of owners can restrict tourist use, and that restriction bites regardless of what the city or the Generalitat allows.
4. Pick your figure honestly. A whole-dwelling HUT needs an existing licence. A llar compartida needs you to live there, be registered there, and stay in the house with up to four guests. A 32-night-plus let needs you to accept rent containment.
5. File through Canal Empresa with a digital certificate, upload the cèdula d'habitabilitat and the owner's authorisation, and pay the 296,14 € municipal fee.
6. Put the physical compliance in place on day one: the NIRTC plate and capacity display, the 24-hour assistance phone, and the rules of coexistence in four languages.
7. Register for guest reporting and build the 24-hour transmission into your check-in routine, keeping the records for three years.
8. Set up the tourist tax with the Agència Tributària de Catalunya, charge 1,75 € per person per night to a maximum of seven nights, and diarise the 1 to 20 April and 1 to 20 October filing windows.
9. Sort your income tax position before the first payout, especially the 19% against 24% IRNR question if you're not resident in Spain.
10. Diarise November 2028. Every existing Girona HUT needs the new urban planning licence by then, and the extension is discretionary.

Who to Contact in Girona about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Step 1 on that list is a phone call more often than a search, so here's who actually owns each question. Two administrations split the work, and knowing which one holds your problem saves an afternoon.

The city: planning, activities and the municipal fee

Ajuntament de Girona, Urbanisme i Activitats handles the planning position, the activity habilitació and the fee.

• Address: Plaça del Vi, 1, 2a planta, 17004 Girona
• Appointments: 972 419 010
• Department line: 972 419 047
• Online: the Establiments turístics page carries the current position on new applications

For anything general, the Oficina d'Assistència en Matèria de Registre, which is the office formerly known as the OIAC, sits at the same address.

• Phone: 972 419 010, Monday to Friday 08:00 to 15:00
• Counter hours: Monday to Thursday 08:30 to 18:00, Friday 08:30 to 15:00, Saturday 09:00 to 14:00
• Summer hours (15 June to 15 September): Monday to Friday 08:30 to 15:00, Saturday 09:00 to 14:00
• Switchboard: 972 419 000, and an appointment is strongly recommended for any procedure

The Generalitat: the tourism registry and inspection

Every HUT and llar compartida procedure, including a change of holder or a deregistration, goes through Canal Empresa rather than over a municipal counter, and the general information line is 012. Tourism inspection for the province sits with the Serveis Territorials del Departament d'Empresa i Treball a Girona, at Plaça Pompeu Fabra 1, 17002 Girona.

Tax

The Agència Tributària de Catalunya administers the tourist tax and any future municipal surcharge.

• Phone: 012, free, 08:00 to 22:00 Monday to Friday on working days
• From outside Catalonia: 932 142 124
• From abroad: 00 34 932 142 124

Income tax, VAT and the non-resident return belong to the Agencia Tributaria (AEAT), not to Catalonia, and its guidance on tourist letting is the page to read before you decide whether you're running a let or a business.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Girona on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those two administrations are also where most of the local argument gets aimed, and the argument has been unusually well documented for a city this size. What follows is my read of publicly stated positions rather than any kind of survey, since Reddit and BiggerPockets were both unreachable from my research environment, so do weigh it accordingly.

• The operators organised, and they won something real. The Associació Turística d'Apartaments de Girona took the Spanish state's national rental registry to the Tribunal Supremo alongside Barcelona's APARTUR and had large parts of it annulled in May 2026. That tells you the professional end of the Girona market is well organised and willing to litigate, which is not the picture in most Spanish cities this size.
• The owners' side treats compliance as the whole game now. The Cambra de la Propietat Urbana de Girona's own guidance for members leads with the obligations and the 3.000, 30.000 and 600.000 euro sanction bands rather than with opportunity, which reads like an industry that has accepted the regime and is trying to keep people out of trouble inside it.
• Investors looking for entry find the door shut, not narrow. There's no permit path, no queue and no fee that converts an unlicensed Girona flat into a legal tourist rental in 2026. Discussion of "how do I get a HUT in Girona" tends to end in either buying an existing licence or moving to a different municipality, and both of those are conversations about a transaction rather than an application.
• Nobody credible argues the rules go unenforced. A city that flagged 105 illegal dwellings across two years using a listings-tracking tool, in a region where the police run summer inspection campaigns, has stopped being a place where an unlicensed listing quietly survives.

One live uncertainty is worth tracking if you already own here. Girona has to adapt its planning to Decret llei 3/2023 at some point, both to reopen new licences and to give existing holders the licence they'll need before November 2028. The shape of that modification decides whether the current 762 dwellings shrink further or stabilise. I found no published timetable for it as of July 2026, so don't plan around a reopening.

If you're comparing a Girona property against a market where a whole unit can still be licensed, run both through BNBCalc before you commit to anything, and put the numbers behind the Girona market next to the rules above. For anyone already holding a licensed dwelling here, the calendar entry that matters is November 2028, and the work to protect that licence starts at the Ajuntament rather than on your listing. Get in front of it, and BNBCalc will tell you what the asset is worth either way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Girona in 2026?

Only if the property already holds a tourist licence, or you rent rooms while living in the home yourself. Girona has not admitted new habitatge d'ús turístic applications since Decret llei 3/2023 took effect in November 2023, because its planning rules predate the decree and do not meet its requirements. A llar compartida, meaning up to four guests in rooms of your own registered residence with you present, is a separate figure and is not covered by that freeze.

How much does a Girona short-term rental licence cost?

The municipal activity fee for an habitatge d'ús turístic is 296,14 euros under the Ajuntament de Girona's 2026 fiscal ordinances, approved on 23 December 2025. That covers the document review and the first technical inspection. The Generalitat charges nothing for the tourism registration itself. Budget separately for the cèdula d'habitabilitat, any technical certificates, and the business waste tariff that replaces the ordinary household rate once the activity starts.

What is the tourist tax on a Girona holiday rental?

A tourist dwelling outside Barcelona city pays 1,75 euros per person per night from 1 April 2026, rising to 2,50 euros on 1 April 2027, under Llei 2/2026. The tax is capped at seven nights per person for a continuous stay, and under-17s are exempt. The holder collects it and files it with the Agència Tributària de Catalunya twice a year, between 1 and 20 April and between 1 and 20 October. Catalan municipalities other than Barcelona may add a surcharge of up to 4 euros from 1 October 2026, and no approved Girona surcharge could be found as of July 2026.

What happens if you rent a flat in Girona on Airbnb without a licence?

Operating without the required habilitació is a very serious infringement under article 89.a of Llei 13/2002, de turisme de Catalunya, and article 94 puts very serious infringements in a band of 30.001 to 600.000 euros, with suspension or closure also available. Girona identifies unlicensed listings with a platform-tracking tool and refers them to the Generalitat, which runs the sanction. The property owner and any management company are jointly liable.

Can you rent a room in your Girona home to tourists?

Yes, as a llar compartida, provided the home is your main and effective residence. You have to be registered at the address, live there, and physically share the home with guests for the whole stay, and the maximum is four tourist places in total. The dwelling still counts inside the 15% per-sector ceiling that Girona's planning modification sets for all tourist accommodation, so check your sector before filing.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.