The Tourist Municipality In The Tourism Regulation Branch Of The Spanish Legislation

Abstract

In the branch of the Spanish legislation that regulates local government, there may be a possibility of articulating a special legal status for those municipalities that have certain specific characteristics, which include intense tourism activity. These municipalities are characterized by having tourism levels that are quite high, which has led to, among other consequences, the existence of many second homes, hotels and other superior lodging establishments, which may include primary residences, and has led to the majority of their populations working mainly in the tourism sector. All of these special characteristics result not only in economic benefits for these municipalities; they also lead to a full range of problems for the aforementioned locales. Among these problems is, for example, the need to provide a high number of obligatory public services, which would be carried out by local residents, including cleaning, protection of citizens, public transport, health services, etc. In many instances, the costs for these services are the direct responsibility of municipal budgets, and in the last instance, it is the locals themselves who pay by way of local taxes. In order to solve these problems, several self-governing laws for tourism structure have anticipated the existence of “tourist municipalities”, which establish certain requisites for their declaration, and which detail a set of obligations and laws for said municipalities.