The NRUA has been annulled: what Spain’s Supreme Court ruling means for holiday rental owners

If you own a holiday rental in Spain, you spent 2025 being told that a new national registration number was compulsory. As of May 2026 it is not. The Supreme Court struck the scheme down, and a great deal of the advice still circulating online has not caught up.

This is what the court decided, what it means for an Andalusian property, and what an owner should actually do now.

Real Decreto 1312/2024 established a Registro Único de Arrendamientos and a Ventanilla Única Digital, implementing European Regulation 2024/1028 on short-term rental data. Every property let for tourist or seasonal purposes was to receive a Número de Registro Único de Alquiler — the NRUA.

Applications opened on 2 January 2025, and from 1 July 2025 the number was required in order to advertise on the digital platforms where bookings are made. A separate order added an annual reporting obligation on top.

The difficulty was structural rather than administrative. Spain’s autonomous communities already run their own tourism registers, and have done for years. Andalusia has the VFT, Catalonia the HUT, the Valencian Community the RTV, the Canaries the VV. The national registry sat on top of all of them.

The Sala de lo Contencioso-Administrativo of the Tribunal Supremo ruled on two appeals. In judgment 620/2026, of 19 May 2026, it upheld the appeal brought by the Generalitat Valenciana. In judgment 629/2026, of 21 May 2026, it upheld a further appeal brought by the industry associations APARTUR and ATA.

The reasoning was constitutional rather than practical. The State argued that it could create the registry under its powers over civil legislation and over the coordination of general economic activity. The court rejected both, holding that an exhaustive national register of this kind exceeded what could be justified as basic legislation or as a coordination measure, and that it invaded competences belonging to the autonomous communities.

Annulled: the national registration procedure, the NRUA as a precondition for advertising, and the annual reporting obligation that came with it. Since 21 May 2026 neither is enforceable.

Still in force: the Ventanilla Única Digital, which continues to operate for the exchange of booking data with the authorities, together with the platform transmission and statistical duties that flow from the European regulation. Spain has not walked away from its European obligations; it has lost the national register it built to discharge them.

Untouched: every regional tourism registry. The VFT in Andalusia is exactly where it was.

The practical position is simpler than it was a year ago. Booking platforms must still verify a valid registration code before a property can be advertised — that obligation comes from Europe and has not gone anywhere. But the code they verify is the regional one. On this coast, that means your VFT.

If your NRUA application was refused, suspended, or left pending when the ruling came down, it lost its legal basis along with the scheme. Where fees were paid for a registration that no longer exists, there are administrative routes to reclaim them.

Your community still has to approve a new let. Since 3 April 2025, under the reform to article 17.12 of the ley de propiedad horizontal, devoting a home to tourist use in a building under horizontal property requires the express approval of three fifths of the owners, representing three fifths of the participation quotas. That is a separate piece of legislation and the Supreme Court ruling has no bearing on it.

Guest registration still applies. Travellers staying in tourist accommodation must still be registered with the authorities, on every booking.

Your VFT obligations are unchanged. The registration, the physical standards behind it, and the requirement to display the code in advertising all continue exactly as before.