No. Sitges is not issuing new tourist licences. The town’s planning rules cap tourist-use homes at 9 per cent of the municipal housing stock, and the current figure already sits above that ceiling, so the council cannot accept new applications. If you want to let a property in Sitges on a short-term basis, you have to buy one that already holds a licence.
This catches buyers out regularly. Someone views a two-bedroom apartment near the Passeig, runs the holiday-let numbers, and assumes the licence is paperwork to be sorted out after completion. It is not slow, and it is not expensive. It is unavailable, at any price, for as long as the caps stand.
Here is what the rules actually say, why the door closed, and what it means if letting income is part of your plan.
What the rules say
Sitges regulates tourist-use homes — habitatges d’ús turístic, or HUT — under a municipal ordinance approved by the town council in June 2021. It divides the municipality into three areas and sets a ceiling for each.
Above those sits one overall limit: taken together, tourist-use homes may not exceed 9 per cent of the town’s total housing. The council reviews the count each year, and its current published position is that the percentages already exceed what the planning rules permit. New authorisations therefore cannot be requested.
Worth noting for anyone looking at the marina: Aiguadolç and the port sit inside Zone A, alongside the old town. These are precisely the areas where short-term letting demand is strongest, and precisely the areas where the ceiling was reached first.
This is not only a Sitges rule
The wider Catalan position has been tightening for three years. Under Decree Law 3/2023, operating a tourist-use home requires a prior municipal planning licence across 262 Catalan municipalities, and new licences run for five years rather than indefinitely.
Barcelona has gone further than anywhere. The city intends to end all 10,101 of its tourist-apartment licences by November 2028, a plan the Spanish Constitutional Court upheld in March 2025. Five municipalities around the city — L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Esplugues de Llobregat, Cornellà and Sant Feliu de Llobregat — have since adopted the same approach.
Read together, the direction is unambiguous. Short-term letting stock across this part of Catalonia is being capped where it is not being removed outright, and there is no serious prospect of the taps reopening in the near term.
What it means if you are buying
Three practical consequences follow, and they matter in different ways depending on what you are trying to do.
If short-term letting is central to your plan, the licence is part of what you are buying. It cannot be added afterwards. That makes it as material as the title, the energy certificate or the community charges — something to verify before you make an offer, not after.
Licensed stock cannot be replicated. A property that already holds a registration carries something the market cannot currently produce. That scarcity is real, and it is beginning to show in what licensed properties achieve against comparable unlicensed ones.
Long-term letting is unaffected. None of this touches a standard residential tenancy. If your plan is a long-term let, or seasonal use with the property empty in between, the tourist-licence question does not arise. Most of our buying clients fall into this category, and the regulation is simply not their problem.
One point of genuine complexity deserves flagging. In June 2023 the Tribunal Superior de Justícia de Catalunya annulled roughly ten articles of the Sitges ordinance, on the basis that they exceeded municipal competence — among them the provision that extinguished a licence when the property was sold. That ruling was subject to appeal and the ordinance has been under review since. What it means for any specific property is a question for the council and your lawyer, in writing, before you commit. Do not take a seller’s assurance on this.
The questions to ask before you offer
If a property is being marketed with letting income attached, these are the checks worth making. Your lawyer should confirm each one:
- Does the property hold a current HUT registration — in whose name, and under what number?
- Is it recorded with the Registre de Turisme de Catalunya, and is that record current?
- Since 1 July 2025, is it registered on the national single rental window, the Finestra Única Digital de Lloguers? Registration costs €27.05.
- What do the community of owners’ statutes say? A community can restrict tourist use regardless of what the town hall permits, and this is the check most often skipped.
- What is the council’s written position on the registration surviving the transfer?
If the answer to the first question is no, and the plan depends on letting, the plan needs to change or the property does. That is a straightforward conversation to have before an offer, and an expensive one to have after completion.
What we tell clients
We are not in the business of talking anyone out of Sitges. But we would rather a buyer knew this in the first conversation than discovered it in the second month, and the number of people who arrive assuming a licence can simply be applied for suggests it is not being said often enough.
If the numbers only work with short-term income, we will tell you plainly, and we will look for a property that already carries the registration. If they work on a long-term let or on your own use, the regulation is a non-issue and we will say that too. Either way you should know which of the two you are in before you offer, not after.
If you are weighing a purchase in Sitges with letting in mind, or you own a licensed property and want to understand what that is now worth, that is a conversation we have most weeks. Have a look at our Sitges property market report for the underlying figures, or the guide to long-term rental investment in Sitges if the short-term route is closed to you.
Ronei Kolesny
REALTOR® 061327620 · API 1190 · AICAT 12717
Correct at July 2026. This article is general information about municipal and Catalan regulation, not legal advice, and the position changes. Zone definitions and caps are as published by the Ajuntament de Sitges under its 2021 tourist-housing ordinance; the Catalan licensing regime is set by Decree Law 3/2023. We always recommend appointing an independent lawyer, and we can introduce one.