The Prosecutor's Office files the complaint against the Almeida government for not inspecting thousands of illegal airbnb floors in Madrid
Support of justice to the inspection plan on the tourist floors of the Madrid City Council. The Prosecutor's Office has filed the complaint filed by more Madrid last April and does not see prevarication in the management of the mayor's team, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, to control the rents without a license.
In the brief, which Europa Press has had access and against which there is no appeal, the Prosecutor's Office concludes that, of the proceedings “are not indications of prevaricing or even merely illegal activity.” The agency considers sufficient that the City Council had reviewed 43% of the tourist floors without a license of the more than 10,000 homes that were being dedicated to this purpose, according to a communication sent by the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid (Framv).
The City Council claimed that it had carried out a preliminary analysis, which turned out that of the total of 10,134 VUTs reported, only 8,943 were registered in the tourist housing registry and did not have a operating license on the date of the study.
From these homes, a total of 4,372 homes were inspected at the date of issuance of the report, that is, 43.3% of the total denounced and, consequently, 2,499 procedures for restoration of legality were initiated, which affect 3,683 tourist accommodation units. In addition, another 3,482 additional tourist housing that did not appear in the association's complaint were inspected. Of these, 953 procedures for restoration of legality were initiated, which affected 1,520 tourist accommodation units.
More Madrid registered the complaint for alleged prevarication directed against the City Council and the Activity Agency to “deliberately consent the illegality of the more than 15,000 tourist floors in the capital”. He did it before the Madrid Prosecutor's Office after in June 2024 La Fravm had made the aforementioned communication: that 10,134 Tourist use homes (VUT) in the municipality of Madrid were registered in the Registry of Tourism Companies of the Community of Madrid without having the mandatory municipal licenses being, therefore, the illegal activity.
They pointed to the “inaction of the mayor that is not simple passivity, it is deliberate consent of illegality,” said spokeswoman Rita Maestre. They based the complaint with the Prosecutor's Office in article 320 of the Criminal Code, which states that “the authority or public official who, knowing his injustice, has omitted the realization of mandatory inspections” could be incurring a crime of prevarication.
The City Council “has acted diligently”
The Prosecutor's Office states that the lack of inspections denounced by more Madrid or a manifestly scarce number “is far from accredited reality” since “they had been inspected, at the date of issuance of the report, a total of 4,372 homes, that is, 43.3% of the total denounced, and 2,499 procedures for restoration of legality, which affected 3,683 units of tourist accommodation, together with the inspection of another 3,482 additional tourist homes that were not contained in the complaint of the association ”.
Together with the fact that the date of submission of the complaints had already been approved the Municipal Urban Inspection Plan (PIUM) for the 2024/2025 period, which included as one of its priority attention lines the control of this type of housing.
In conclusion, the Prosecutor's Office argues that the Madrid City Council “has acted diligently in everything related to urban inspection and discipline in relation to the living use of tourist use (VUT)” since a very significant number of homes have been inspected, with the complexity and difficulty that this entails. ”
They also emphasize that “inspection plans have been successively developed, with particular attention to this problem, the officials in charge of these tasks have increased in a prominent way”, although they are not integrated into a unit dedicated exclusively to the VUTs but are in the urban discipline service.
According to the judicial body, this decision “does not seem reproachable, much less illicit” since “a high number of sanctions has been imposed, derived from an equally bulky number of sanctioning files and has been very frequently resorted (1,265 actions) to the mechanism of the coercive fine.”
After knowing the ruling of the Prosecutor's Office, the Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility team, with Borja Carabante in front, stressed in a statement that the complaint filed “is discredited with the information sent by the City Council of Madrid, in a detailed and justified manner.”
