STS 620/2026
Spain's Supreme Court judgment STS 620/2026 (Appeal 143/2025), handed down 21 May 2026, which voided the mandatory national STR registration number from Royal Decree 1312/2024 while upholding the SDEP digital single window and data-transmission obligations.
Spain's Supreme Court judgment of 21 May 2026, which voided the national short-let registration number but left EU-facing data rules intact, devolving registration to all seventeen regions while leaving foral civil-law competence untouched.
Last refreshed: 28 July 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Does the ruling also undermine the EU short-let data transmission framework Spain built?
Timeline for STS 620/2026
Mentioned in: France clears a fast tourist-let removal
Nomads & CommunitiesMentioned in: Navarra writes the rule Madrid could not
Nomads & CommunitiesVoided the national STR registration number and reversed competence to autonomous communities
Nomads & Communities: Spain's top court voids STR registryVoided the national Unique Registration Number on federalism grounds
Nomads & Communities: Spain cuts short-lets, court voids toolBackground
STS 620/2026, issued 21 May 2026, partially annulled Royal Decree 1312/2024 on constitutional competence grounds, following an appeal lodged by the Generalitat Valenciana. It struck down the mandatory national Unique Registration Number for short-term rentals, on the grounds that the central state had exceeded its powers by creating a single national registry, while leaving intact the SDEP digital-single-window and data-transmission obligations that implement EU Regulation 2024/1028.
The ruling devolved administrative registration to Spain's seventeen autonomous communities but Left civil lease law untouched; that separate competence, reserved under Article 149.1.8 of the Constitution to six historic foral communities, predates the judgment and was not created by it. Airbnb's pending reconsideration motion against a EUR 64 million Spanish fine now carries a competence-based defence, though no hearing date has been set.
The judgment's wider significance is what it does to the EU's own short-let data regime: Spain's SDEP survives, but enforcement now runs through seventeen separate regional registration frameworks rather than one, testing whether the EU Regulation can hold with devolved architecture.
The ruling fragments Spain's registration map
STS 620/2026 struck down the state's single national short-let registration number on 21 May 2026, handing registration authority back to Spain's seventeen autonomous communities while leaving the EU-facing SDEP data-transmission duties intact.
The ruling devolved administrative registration only. It did not touch civil lease law, which Article 149.1.8 of the Constitution reserves to six foral communities. Navarra's Ley Foral 11/2026, gazetted 28 July, draws on that older, separate foral competence rather than on this judgment, a distinction the ruling's own fragmentation into seventeen registration regimes makes easy to blur.