Socialists claim that 1 in 4 houses in Xàbia are now dedicated to tourism

The socialist opposition PSOE has called for an immediate moratorium on the granting of new licences for tourist rentals, insisting that it is time to “stop to reflect and not die of success” as the debate on the effects of over-tourism continues to dominate.

The PSOE spokesperson, Vicent Miralles, said that the number of tourist licences being granted in Xàbia continues to grow. “From May 20 until now, there have been 268 new registrations, 27% more than in the same period in 2023” claiming that “this means that almost 1 in 4 houses in Xàbia is dedicated to tourism, driving out local residents, collapsing public services, and generating problems with coexistence since reasonable rents cannot be offered”.

In a statement released after the plenary session, the socialists accused the tripartite government team of “deliberately wasting time to avoid addressing the problem” and claimed that they will “react late, badly and half-heartedly”. It was also pointed out that the government team was in favour of a moratorium back in May and that mayor Rosa Cardona had agreed with the content of a motion presented by the socialists in June to stop the granting of tourist licences. However, they say that no progress has been made, despite a sectoral meeting being announced in May. “There is no exact date [for the meeting], no list of participants, no work plan or defined objectives”, the statement said, even claiming that such a moratorium was blocked by the Department of Town Planning.

During the session, Miralles insisted that “a moratorium would not harm tourism, the influx into Xàbia would not fall by a single visitor nor would a single euro of business volume be lost. It is simply a matter of not growing [the sector] further without a plan, without common sense, and at the cost of ending our way of life, of not expelling people from Xàbia, worsening coexistence, services, and the conservation of natural spaces”.

The socialist statement pointed out that other town have already taken the sort of measures being proposed by the PSOE in Xàbia. Dénia has 5,000 approved tourist accommodation with almost twice the amount of houses than Xàbia and just 12% of Altea’s homes are dedicated to tourism as opposed to 23% in Xàbia. And other tourist destinations in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Andalusia are already taking measures to control tourism licences.