STS 620/2026

Spain's Tribunal Supremo handed down judgment STS 620/2026 on 21 May 2026, partially annulling Royal Decree 1312/2024 on constitutional competence grounds. The court voided the mandatory national Unique Registration Number (NRA) for short-term rentals, ruling that the central state had exceeded its powers by creating a single national registry; STR registration authority reverts to Spain's seventeen autonomous communities. The ruling upheld the SDEP data-transmission obligations and the digital single window under EU Regulation 2024/1028. The appellant was the Generalitat Valenciana.

Royal Decree 1312/2024 had been the central government's vehicle for implementing EU Regulation 2024/1028 in Spain, establishing a national registration system that all short-let platforms including Airbnb and Vrbo were required to use. The Supreme Court did not suspend the decree in its entirety: the SDEP window through which platforms submit listing data to authorities survives, preserving Spain's compliance with the EU framework. Airbnb's pending reconsideration motion against the EUR 64m fine (upheld by the TSJM in March 2026) now gains a competence-based defence, though no hearing date had been set as of the ruling date.

The ruling fragments Spain's STR regulatory map: nomad-destination regions such as The Canary Islands, Catalonia and the Balearics already held their own registration systems, but the ruling forces hosts and platforms operating across multiple communities to comply with seventeen separate frameworks rather than one. Its wider significance extends to the EU STR Regulation itself, which relies on member states having functional national SDEPs; Spain's fragmented implementation tests whether the EU regime can hold with devolved enforcement architectures.