La ciudad en venta: Airbnb y el futuro de los barrios

Bueno, lo de Colau fue un momento político interesante.

Well, the Colau moment was politically interesting.

Llegó al poder en 2015, congeló las nuevas licencias para apartamentos turísticos, y multó a Airbnb con seiscientos mil euros.

She came to power in 2015, froze new licenses for tourist apartments, and fined Airbnb six hundred thousand euros.

Fue la primera ciudad europea en hacer algo así a esa escala, y el mundo entero estaba mirando.

It was the first European city to do something like that at that scale, and the whole world was watching.

Did it work, though?

Because from what I've read, the number of illegal listings barely moved.

The platform kept operating, the apartments stayed on the site, and Airbnb essentially paid the fine and carried on.

Es que ese es el problema estructural de intentar regular una plataforma global con herramientas municipales.

That's the structural problem with trying to regulate a global platform using municipal tools.

Barcelona podía multar a los anunciantes locales, pero no tenía poder directo sobre los servidores de una empresa registrada en Delaware.

Barcelona could fine local advertisers, but it had no direct power over the servers of a company registered in Delaware.

La asimetría es enorme.

The asymmetry is enormous.

Madrid took a different path, right?

The approach here was more about zoning than enforcement.

Restricting tourist apartments to specific districts, limiting the percentage of buildings that could convert.

How has that landed?

Mira, Madrid intentó algo más quirúrgico.

Look, Madrid tried something more surgical.

En 2019 se aprobó una normativa que, en teoría, limitaba los apartamentos turísticos al centro histórico y exigía acceso independiente, es decir, que no compartieran portal con residentes permanentes.

In 2019 a regulation was passed that, in theory, limited tourist apartments to the historic center and required independent access, meaning they couldn't share an entrance with permanent residents.

En la práctica, la aplicación ha sido irregular, por decirlo con elegancia.

In practice, enforcement has been irregular, to put it elegantly.

Irregular is diplomatic.

Look, I've been in this city enough times to know that the gap between what the ordinance says and what you see on Calle de Fuencarral on any given Saturday is considerable.

No, no, tienes razón.

No, you're right.

Pero aquí hay un debate político legítimo también.

But there's also a legitimate political debate here.

Hay gente, y no es gente de mala fe, que argumenta que el propietario tiene derecho a hacer lo que quiera con su propiedad privada.

There are people, and they're not acting in bad faith, who argue that the owner has the right to do whatever they want with their private property.

Es un argumento liberal clásico, y no puedes simplemente descartarlo.

It's a classic liberal argument, and you can't simply dismiss it.

I've heard that argument plenty, and I take it seriously up to a point.

But the thing is, the right to use your property doesn't typically include the right to externalize your costs onto your neighbors.

If your decision to run a short-term rental drives up rents for the family on the floor below you, that's not just a private transaction anymore.

Exactamente, y ahí es donde los economistas hablan de externalidades negativas.

Exactly, and that's where economists talk about negative externalities.

Cada apartamento que sale del mercado residencial para convertirse en turístico reduce la oferta disponible para los vecinos, lo que presiona los precios al alza.

Every apartment that leaves the residential market to become a tourist rental reduces the supply available to residents, which drives prices upward.

Es una dinámica que se retroalimenta y que afecta de forma desproporcionada a las clases medias y trabajadoras.

It's a self-reinforcing dynamic that disproportionately affects the middle and working classes.

The research on this is pretty stark.

There was a study on Boston that found every ten percent increase in Airbnb listings corresponded to roughly a one percent increase in rents.

Doesn't sound like much, but when you're already rent-burdened, that one percent is the difference between staying and leaving.

A ver, y en ciudades como Lisboa o Palma de Mallorca los efectos han sido todavía más brutales, porque el tejido residencial de partida era más pequeño.

Look, and in cities like Lisbon or Palma de Mallorca the effects have been even more brutal, because the residential fabric to begin with was smaller.

En Lisboa, barrios enteros como Alfama o Mouraria perdieron más del treinta por ciento de su población residente en menos de diez años.

In Lisbon, entire neighborhoods like Alfama or Mouraria lost more than thirty percent of their permanent population in less than ten years.

Thirty percent.

I mean, that's not gentrification in the slow sociological sense.

That's population collapse.

And those are some of the most historically textured neighborhoods in southern Europe.

When you hollow them out, what exactly are tourists coming to see?

Bueno, eso es exactamente la paradoja que los urbanistas llaman la «museificación» de la ciudad.

Well, that's exactly the paradox that urban planners call the 'museumification' of the city.

El turista viene buscando autenticidad, la vida local, el barrio de verdad.

The tourist comes looking for authenticity, local life, the real neighborhood.

Pero su propia presencia masiva destruye precisamente eso que ha venido a buscar.

But their own massive presence destroys precisely what they came to find.

Es una contradicción inherente al modelo.

It's a contradiction inherent to the model.

The extraordinary thing is that Airbnb's own marketing feeds that paradox.

Their whole brand is built on the idea of living like a local.

But the more people who follow that idea, the less local the place becomes.

It's almost philosophically self-defeating.

Y hay algo más que me parece fundamental entender: el perfil del anfitrión ha cambiado radicalmente.

And there's something else I think is fundamental to understand: the host profile has changed radically.

En 2012, el anfitrión típico de Airbnb era un particular que alquilaba su piso mientras estaba de vacaciones.

In 2012, the typical Airbnb host was an individual renting out their apartment while they were on vacation.

Hoy, en ciudades como Madrid o París, más del cuarenta por ciento de los ingresos de la plataforma los generan anfitriones con más de diez propiedades.

Today, in cities like Madrid or Paris, more than forty percent of the platform's revenue is generated by hosts with more than ten properties.

So the sharing economy became a landlord economy.

That's the story in one sentence.

And those multi-property hosts, they're often not even individuals anymore.

They're LLCs, shell companies, management firms operating at scale.

La verdad es que sí, y hay todo un ecosistema empresarial construido alrededor de esto: empresas de gestión de propiedades, consultoras de rendimiento, hasta algoritmos de precios dinámicos que ajustan las tarifas hora a hora según la demanda.

The truth is yes, and there's an entire business ecosystem built around this: property management companies, yield consultancies, even dynamic pricing algorithms that adjust rates hour by hour based on demand.

Esto no tiene nada de economía colaborativa;

This has nothing to do with the sharing economy;

es capitalismo de plataforma en estado puro.

it's platform capitalism in its purest form.

Let me push back on something, though, because I don't want us to be completely one-sided about this.

There is a real argument that Airbnb democratized travel in a meaningful way.

It made cities accessible to people who couldn't afford the Marriott.

A family from rural Ohio or a backpacker from São Paulo could stay in a real apartment, in a real neighborhood, for half the price of a hotel.

Es que ese argumento tiene algo de verdad, no te lo voy a negar.

That argument has some truth to it, I won't deny that.

Pero hay que preguntarse: ¿a qué coste y para quién?

But you have to ask: at what cost and for whom?

Si la democratización del turismo se financia con el desplazamiento de los residentes de renta baja, entonces lo que estás haciendo es transferir riqueza de los más vulnerables hacia los visitantes y los inversores.

If the democratization of tourism is financed by the displacement of low-income residents, then what you're actually doing is transferring wealth from the most vulnerable toward visitors and investors.

Eso no es democratización;

That's not democratization;

es redistribución regresiva.

it's regressive redistribution.

Regressive redistribution.

That's a phrase I'm going to borrow.

And it connects to something bigger, which is this idea that these platforms tend to extract value from cities without contributing proportionally back to them.

Airbnb doesn't pay hotel taxes in most places, it doesn't employ local staff, it doesn't build anything.

Bueno, esto ha ido cambiando con la presión regulatoria, eso hay que reconocerlo.

Well, this has been changing with regulatory pressure, that has to be acknowledged.

En muchas ciudades ahora hay acuerdos de recaudación de tasas turísticas.

In many cities there are now tourist tax collection agreements.

Pero el sector hotelero, que sí paga impuestos, empleo, seguridad social, ha estado argumentando durante años que compite en condiciones radicalmente desiguales.

But the hotel industry, which does pay taxes, employment costs, social security, has been arguing for years that it competes under radically unequal conditions.

Y en eso tienen bastante razón.

And they have quite a point there.

New York City is worth dwelling on for a moment, because what happened there in 2023 was genuinely significant.

Local Law 18 essentially made most short-term rentals illegal overnight.

You had to register as a host, be physically present during the stay, host no more than two guests.

The number of Airbnb listings dropped by something like eighty percent.

Nueva York es el caso de estudio más importante hasta ahora porque demuestra que la regulación estricta sí puede funcionar técnicamente.

New York is the most important case study so far because it shows that strict regulation can technically work.

El número de pisos turísticos se desplomó casi de la noche a la mañana.

The number of tourist apartments collapsed almost overnight.

Lo que aún no está claro es si eso ha tenido el efecto esperado en el mercado de alquiler residencial, que sigue siendo absolutamente brutal en Manhattan.

What is still unclear is whether that has had the expected effect on the residential rental market, which remains absolutely brutal in Manhattan.

Right, and that gets at the deeper problem.

Airbnb is a symptom of a housing crisis, not its root cause.

The root cause is decades of underbuilding in desirable cities, restrictive zoning, planning systems that made it nearly impossible to add supply.

Take Airbnb away and you still have that underlying dysfunction.

Mira, eso es importante decirlo, porque hay alcaldes que han encontrado en Airbnb un chivo expiatorio muy conveniente para no hablar de sus propias políticas de vivienda, que llevan siendo desastrosas desde los años noventa.

Look, that's important to say, because there are mayors who have found in Airbnb a very convenient scapegoat to avoid talking about their own housing policies, which have been disastrous since the nineties.

Perseguir a una empresa americana es mucho más sencillo políticamente que afrontar el poder de los promotores inmobiliarios locales.

Going after an American company is much more politically straightforward than confronting the power of local real estate developers.

That is a point I want to give full credit for, because it's right and it's uncomfortable.

The same cities that are banning Airbnb are often the ones that approved luxury towers for foreign investors or sold off public housing stock twenty years ago.

The platform is a villain that fits neatly on a press release.

La verdad es que el problema de fondo es que tratamos la vivienda como un activo financiero en lugar de como un bien social básico.

The truth is that the underlying problem is that we treat housing as a financial asset rather than as a basic social good.

Mientras esa lógica no cambie, habrá siempre alguna forma de extraer rentas del stock residencial de las ciudades, con Airbnb o sin él.

As long as that logic doesn't change, there will always be some way to extract rents from cities' residential stock, with Airbnb or without it.

La siguiente iteración ya está aquí: los alquileres de media estancia a través de plataformas como Spotahome.

The next iteration is already here: medium-term rentals through platforms like Spotahome.

And there's a cultural dimension to this that I find almost melancholy, if I'm honest.

Because what disappears when a neighborhood converts to tourism isn't just affordable housing.

It's the butcher who knows your name, the bar where people actually argue about football, the school where local kids go.

It's the infrastructure of ordinary life.

A ver, ahí tocas algo que a mí me afecta personalmente, porque yo crecí en un barrio de Madrid que hoy es irreconocible.

Look, you're touching on something that affects me personally, because I grew up in a neighborhood of Madrid that is unrecognizable today.

El mercado donde mi madre compraba el pescado es ahora un local de gin-tonics para turistas.

The market where my mother used to buy fish is now a gin and tonic bar for tourists.

El colegio donde yo estudié tiene cada año menos alumnos porque no quedan familias en el barrio.

The school where I studied has fewer and fewer pupils every year because there are no families left in the neighborhood.

Eso no es abstracto;

That's not abstract;

eso es una pérdida real y concreta.

that's a real and concrete loss.

You know, I've covered displacement in a lot of contexts, and one thing I've noticed is that it rarely looks catastrophic in any single moment.

It's cumulative.

One apartment, then another, then the corner store closes because its customer base moved out, then the school shrinks.

By the time you notice the neighborhood is gone, the neighborhood is gone.

Es que ese carácter gradual es lo que hace el problema tan difícil de combatir políticamente.

That gradual nature is precisely what makes the problem so difficult to fight politically.

No hay un día concreto en el que puedas decir «aquí fue el desastre».

There's no specific day on which you can say 'this was the disaster.' It's a silent erosion, and by the time public opinion reacts, the damage is already very advanced.

Es una erosión silenciosa, y cuando la opinión pública reacciona, el daño ya está muy avanzado.

That's why restrictions always arrive too late.

Por eso las restricciones siempre llegan tarde.

So where does this actually go?

Because I don't think Airbnb is disappearing.

The platform has over seven million listings worldwide, it survived the pandemic, and it remains one of the most valuable companies in the travel sector.

Regulation hasn't killed it;

it's adapted.

Bueno, Airbnb ha demostrado una capacidad de adaptación notable.

Well, Airbnb has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for adaptation.

Cuando las ciudades restringen los pisos en el centro, la plataforma crece en zonas periféricas y rurales, lo que empieza a generar tensiones similares en pueblos que nunca habían tenido este problema.

When cities restrict apartments in the center, the platform grows in peripheral and rural areas, which is starting to generate similar tensions in towns that had never faced this problem.

El conflicto simplemente se traslada, como el agua que encuentra siempre una grieta.

The conflict simply relocates, like water that always finds a crack.

The water finding a crack.

I'm going to use that.

Look, the honest answer might be that there is no clean solution here, because you're trying to resolve a genuine conflict between legitimate interests: the owner's right to profit, the traveler's access to affordable accommodation, and the resident's right to a stable neighborhood.

Those three things are in real structural tension.

Sí, pero hay cosas que claramente funcionan mejor que otras.

Yes, but there are things that clearly work better than others.

Los sistemas de registro obligatorio con cupos máximos por zona, las limitaciones al número de noches anuales, la obligación de que el anfitrión sea residente habitual: todo eso ha demostrado cierta eficacia donde se aplica con rigor.

Mandatory registration systems with maximum quotas per zone, limits on the number of annual nights, the requirement that the host be a habitual resident: all of that has shown some effectiveness where it's applied rigorously.

El problema no es que no sepamos qué hacer;

The problem isn't that we don't know what to do;

es que falta voluntad política para hacerlo.

it's that there's a lack of political will to do it.

And the political will problem connects to who owns property and who votes, which is its own can of worms.

I think what I keep coming back to is that Airbnb forced a conversation that cities had been avoiding for decades, about what housing is actually for, who cities are built for, and whether the tourist experience can ever be an acceptable justification for making a city unlivable for the people who actually live there.

Mira, en eso sí estamos completamente de acuerdo.

Look, on that we are completely in agreement.

Y creo que la pregunta que deberían hacerse los políticos no es «¿cómo regulamos Airbnb?» sino algo más profundo: «¿qué tipo de ciudad queremos ser?» Porque una ciudad que solo puede permitirse ser visitada, pero no habitada, no es una ciudad.

And I think the question politicians should be asking themselves is not 'how do we regulate Airbnb?' but something deeper: 'what kind of city do we want to be?' Because a city that can only afford to be visited, but not inhabited, is not a city.

Es un parque temático con catedral.

It's a theme park with a cathedral.

A theme park with a cathedral.

That's the line.

I think we should end on that, because I don't think either of us wants to undercut it.

This has been a genuinely good conversation, and I hope the people listening feel like they got more than just the headline.

La verdad es que sí, ha dado para mucho.

The truth is yes, this has covered a lot of ground.

Y si alguien está escuchando esto desde un apartamento de Airbnb en el centro de una ciudad europea, bueno, que al menos lo piense un momento.

And if anyone is listening to this from an Airbnb apartment in the center of a European city, well, at least think about it for a moment.

No digo que se vaya, digo que piense en quién vivía allí antes y por qué ya no vive.

I'm not saying leave;