Barcelona after 2028: what happens to the serviced apartments

I’ve been thinking about doing a proper workation in Barcelona for a while now. Not a holiday or a relocation, somewhere in between. A month, maybe six weeks, with a real apartment that has an equipped kitchen and pleasant interior, somewhere in a neighbourhood that feels like mine for a while. The kind of stay where you actually get work done and still have an interesting city to explore when you close the laptop.

When I started looking into it seriously, I kept coming across the rental ban. And my first question was what does this actually mean for me, will I still be able to go, or must I hurry until everything is as it is now?

Because my concern isn’t about Airbnb or tourist licences or municipal housing policy, it’s more practical. The places I want to stay, like premium serviced apartments that are properly managed, with a kitchen that works, WiFi that doesn’t drop, and an actual person to call if something goes wrong, are those going away? Am I going to open a booking site in 2027 and find nothing between a generic hotel and someone’s spare room?

I put that question to Jaume, who works in Barcelona’s property market and has watched these regulations develop from the inside. His answer surprised me, not because the situation is worse than I feared, but because I had been worrying about the wrong thing entirely.

The ban you’ve heard about, and why it probably doesn’t affect you

The 2028 tourist licence phase-out is real and it is legally settled. Barcelona’s 10,000 short-term tourist apartments, the ones rented for stays of up to 31 days to holidaymakers, will lose their licences by November 2028 and cannot renew them. Spain’s Constitutional Court upheld the decision in March 2025. It is not going to be reversed.

But if you are planning to work from Barcelona for a month or six weeks, this ban is not aimed at you. Tourist apartments serve short-stay holiday guests with high turnover. A professionally managed serviced apartment rented to an executive or professional on a monthly basis sits in a different legal category entirely, one the city’s housing policy is not trying to eliminate.

The story that actually matters for people like us is a different one, and it is considerably less discussed.

The law that is actually changing things right now

In late 2024 and through 2025, Catalonia passed legislation that goes further than the tourist ban and affects the market in ways most visitors don’t know about.

Under the new rules, any rental for work, professional, or study purposes, regardless of duration, is now legally classified as residential use. That means the landlord must comply with rent caps, document the temporary nature of the contract correctly, and treat the arrangement with the same legal obligations as a long-term residential lease.

The practical effect is significant. Many private landlords who might previously have rented their apartment to a visiting professional for a month or two are no longer willing to do so. The legal and financial obligations are complex, the penalties for non-compliance are serious, fines ranging from 9 000 to 900 000€, and the administrative burden is simply not worth it for someone renting out a single property informally.

What this means is that the supply of available accommodation for short-stay professionals is already contracting, not in 2028, but now. The informal market, the private landlord who used to rent a nice apartment through a platform for a few weeks, is pulling back. What remains is consolidating around operators with proper legal structures, professional management, and the compliance frameworks that private landlords cannot easily replicate.

Will my only option be a hotel?

This is the question I kept coming back to, and the honest answer is: not if you know where to look, but the options are narrowing for those who don’t.

Hotels are the wrong solution for a workation. A hotel room is designed for someone passing through. It does not have a kitchen where you can cook after a long day, a table where you can actually think, or a second bedroom for when someone joins you for a week. At Barcelona’s rates for anything worth staying in, the maths of a six-week hotel stay don’t work unless someone else is paying without question.

The version of Barcelona that makes a workation worth doing requires an apartment. The question is who is operating them, and how well.

As the informal market contracts and private landlords step back, professionally managed serviced apartments, properly structured, legally compliant, positioned for longer-stay professionals, are not just surviving this regulatory environment. They are becoming the clearest option left for the kind of guest who actually wants to stay here and work well.

What this means if you are planning to come

Barcelona is not closing. Executives still relocate here. Companies still send people for months at a time. The city is still worth the stay in every way that matters.

What is changing is the quality of the options and who is running them. The amateur end of the market is being regulated out. What remains, managed properly, becomes more valuable as a result, and for a guest who knows what they are looking for, that is not bad news.

The workation I have been thinking about is still possible. The bar for finding the right place is just higher than it used to be.

Bizflats offers professionally managed serviced apartments in Barcelona for professionals and workation stays of one month or longer. Fully compliant with current Catalan rental legislation, and designed for guests who need more than a hotel room. For property owners navigating the post-2028 landscape, we offer apartment management structured for the longer-stay professional market. Browse apartments