Barcelona and Madrid are taking different planning approaches to tourist accommodation, with direct consequences for property owners and developers seeking to open or convert premises. Barcelona’s Pla Especial Urbanístic d’Allotjaments Turístics (PEUAT), the city’s Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodation, was definitively approved by the municipal plenary on 27 January 2017.

In Madrid, the City Council initially approved a Special Plan on 21 May 2026 to change the rules for accommodation use on land covered by Grade 3 of Zonal Standard 9 and on certain industrial plots. The approval was published in issue 126 of the Official Gazette of the Community of Madrid on 29 May 2026.

For applicants in Barcelona, accommodation projects are assessed under the PEUAT framework. In the Madrid areas covered by the new proposal, industrial-site owners could seek accommodation uses beyond hotels, subject to the plan and sector-specific rules.

Barcelona’s PEUAT has applied since 2017

The PEUAT covers tourist accommodation establishments, youth hostels, collective temporary-accommodation residences and tourist-use dwellings in Barcelona.

Barcelona City Council’s open institutional repository records that the plan was approved by the Consell Municipal, the city’s municipal council, on 27 January 2017. It was published in the Butlletí Oficial de la Província de Barcelona, the provincial official gazette, on 6 March 2017.

  • 27 January 2017: Barcelona’s municipal plenary approved the PEUAT.
  • 6 March 2017: the plan was published in the provincial official gazette.
  • Coverage: tourist accommodation, youth hostels, collective temporary residences and tourist-use dwellings across Barcelona.

Madrid proposal extends accommodation options on industrial plots

Madrid’s Special Plan would allow tertiary accommodation use as an alternative use on industrial plots within its scope. The legal notice says this can include tourist apartments, hotel-apartments, hostels, guesthouses, tourist-use dwellings and other forms recognised by Community of Madrid sectoral rules.

The City Council promoted the plan to continue decentralising tertiary accommodation uses towards peripheral districts and to recover residential use in central areas.

According to the notice on the proposed change, the plan applies to areas governed by Grade 3 of Zonal Standard 9, known as NZ 9, and to qualifying industrial plots in planning areas with non-industrial global use.

The proposal follows several Madrid planning measures cited in the notice:

  • 27 March 2019: approval of the Special Accommodation Plan, file PEH 00/313.
  • 8 November 2023: approval of a targeted amendment to Madrid’s 1997 General Urban Development Plan, file MPG 00/343.
  • 27 August 2025: approval of the amendment known as Plan RESIDE, file MPG 00/346.

The Madrid agreement of 21 May 2026 was an initial approval. Its publication in the Official Gazette of the Community of Madrid on 29 May 2026 records the decision and the planning scope proposed by the City Council.

Primary sources: Gerència d'Ecologia Urbana. Reported by Source Text Link, Xavier Canalís, ramonycajalabogados.com, Jose Maria Ortega Anton, portalrecerca.uab.cat, hvs.com, politico.eu, madrid.es, EjePrime, Gacetín Madrid, Paul Stevens, iberley.es, uria.com, Ruth Ugalde;Miguel Ángel Gavilanes, EY Abogados, Javier Ibáñez, VIA Empresa.