Spanish Ministry of Consumer Affairs

Spain's Ministry of Consumer Affairs (Ministerio de Consumo) imposed a €64 million fine on Airbnb in December 2025 for unlicensed listings, falsified registration numbers and misleading advertising. The fine was upheld by the High Court of Justice of Madrid on 23 March 2026, when the court refused to suspend it pending Airbnb's appeal. The ministry chose to act under existing consumer-protection powers rather than waiting for EU Regulation 2024/1028's registration framework to take effect on 20 May 2026.

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs sits within the Coalition government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (PSOE-led Coalition). It oversees consumer rights, product safety and market regulation. The Airbnb case represents the ministry's most prominent STR enforcement action and its most aggressive assertion that consumer-protection law can reach platform behaviour that predates the EU's dedicated STR registration regime.

The legal risk is significant. Platform lawyers have argued in off-record briefings that a consumer-affairs ministry cannot use national STR rules to bypass the EU's single-market rules for digital services under the E-Commerce Directive and the Digital Services Act. If Airbnb prevails on that argument at substantive hearing, the fine will be reversed and the ministry's chosen legal route will be discredited. The ministry's calculation appears to be that the suspension refusal, even if temporary, sends the deterrence signal it needs before the EU-wide framework goes live.