According to Booking, which specifies that it has around 200,000 properties in Spain, this decision was taken because the properties in question had not ‘provided a valid licence’ to allow rental for tourist purposes.

The Spanish Government's Ministry of Consumer Affairs welcomed the removal of these advertisements in a statement, referring to a total of ‘4,093 illegal advertisements’ removed at the request of the authorities.

The growth of tourist accommodation is ‘one of the causes of the difficulties in accessing housing faced by thousands of people in Spain today, especially in areas that receive the largest influx of tourists,’ the ministry explained.

According to the ministry, most of the ads removed were in the Canary Islands, one of Spain's most popular tourist destinations.

The same happened with the Airbnb platform, which had to remove 65,000 tourist accommodation advertisements in May, considering that they violated the regulations on advertising this type of residence.

The platform counterattacked, stating in a statement that the ministry ‘was not competent to enforce regulations on tourist accommodation’ and promised to challenge the decision in court.

So far, however, the courts have rejected two appeals by Airbnb against these requests.

According to the National Statistics Institute (INE), Spain currently has 368,000 tourist accommodations.