Jaume Collboni
Mayor of Barcelona since June 2023; PSC (Socialist party) politician WHO announced the cruise day-stop tax doubling on 13 May 2026.
Jaume Collboni welcomed Brussels' draft housing act on 9 September as backing his plan to end Barcelona's 10,101 tourist-flat licences in November 2028, as the city counted 525 illegal listings in August.
Last refreshed: 3 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Why is Barcelona's mayor taxing cruise passengers instead of controlling rents?
Timeline for Jaume Collboni
EU Act ties short-let caps to registers
Nomads & CommunitiesMentioned in: Klungkung charges to reach Nusa Penida
Nomads & CommunitiesAnnounced cruise day-stop tax doubling and berth reduction on 13 May
Nomads & Communities: Barcelona doubles its cruise day-stop taxBackground
Jaume Collboni has been Mayor of Barcelona since June 2023 for the Socialists' Party of Catalonia (PSC), the city's first Socialist mayor since 2011. His tourism policy runs on two tracks: a short-let data and licence programme, and charges aimed at the visitors the city least wants.
Collboni has had least room on housing. National rent measures he backed were blocked in Congress by the Partido Popular, Vox and Junts, most visibly in the April 2026 vote against the rent-freeze extension. That has pushed him toward levers a city controls: the cruise day-stop tax, berth reductions and the licence phase-out.
The licence plan has the longest reach. If the 10,101 tourist-flat licences lapse in November 2028 as he intends, Barcelona removes its legal holiday-flat stock in one step, and the European Commission's draft act, by exempting measures already adopted, shields that plan rather than challenging it.
Collboni bets on ending flat licences
Collboni's plan is to let Barcelona's 10,101 tourist-flat licences lapse in November 2028 rather than renew them. On 9 September he said Brussels' proposed European Affordable Housing Act supports that course: the text lets authorities restrict short lets in the costliest housing markets if they already enforce registration, and it exempts measures adopted before it enters into force.
His inspectors have pressed enforcement hard: they found 525 illegal tourist-flat listings during August, 47% above the May figure. In May 2026 Barcelona's live data portal flagged roughly 2,400 unregistered listings to Catalonia's government in a single day, the kind of data trail the draft act expects a city to hold before it caps anything.
Collboni doubles the cruise day charge
On 13 May 2026 Collboni announced that Barcelona would double its tax on cruise passengers stopping for the day, from €4 to €8, saying he wanted to discourage visitors WHO arrive by ship for a single day. The council also approved cutting cruise berths from seven to five by 2030, demolishing the three oldest terminals at Moll Adossat and lowering peak daily capacity from about 37,000 passengers to 31,000.
The move came two weeks after the Partido Popular, Vox and Junts defeated Spain's rent-freeze extension in Congress on 28 April, closing a national housing lever to him. Passengers WHO start or end their cruise in Barcelona are exempt, which pushes cruise lines toward homeport calls rather than day stops.
Why did Jaume Collboni double Barcelona's cruise tax in 2026?
Is Barcelona cutting the number of cruise ship berths?
Are homeport cruise passengers in Barcelona affected by the new tax?
