Spain Rental Licence CheckIndependent licence information

Data Sources

Where our information comes from, how it is normalised, how often it is refreshed and what our results mean.

Geographic coverage

Our detailed searchable registration database currently focuses on Málaga province and the Costa del Sol. Additional areas of Spain can be added as the service expands.

  • Málaga province (Costa del Sol) — current primary coverage, imported from OpenRTA.
  • Other Andalucían provinces (Cádiz, Granada, Almería, Sevilla, Huelva, Córdoba, Jaén) — not yet imported, so registrations there cannot be found here.
  • Rest of Spain — not yet imported. The service is built to add further regional registers as they become available.

Curated Costa del Sol towns are: Marbella, Málaga, Mijas, Estepona, Fuengirola, Benalmádena, Torremolinos, Nerja, Manilva, Casares, Benahavís, Torrox, Vélez-Málaga, Rincón de la Victoria. Inland Málaga municipalities outside that list, such as Ronda or Antequera, remain fully searchable — they are simply not described as Costa del Sol.

What this website currently holds

  • Viviendas de uso turístico (VUT) — 0 records. High OpenRTA coverage for Málaga province.
  • Apartamentos turísticos (A) — 0 records. Published subset only.
  • Establecimientos hoteleros (H) — 0 records. Published subset only.
  • Total searchable accommodation records — 0. Last database update: Not recorded.

These figures are counted in the database itself, so they describe every record we hold rather than a page of results. Legacy VFT numbers are a search alias for the same VUT registration and are never counted twice. National ESFCTU-style identifiers are recognised for explanation only, are not stored as records, and are not included in any count. Rural categories (VTAR, CR) have not been imported, so they contribute nothing to these totals.

Current source

Our first official source is the Registro de Turismo de Andalucía (OpenRTA), the open-data register published by the Junta de Andalucía. It lists tourist accommodation establishments registered in Andalucía, including holiday-rental properties on the Costa del Sol, with their registration code, establishment details, municipality, capacity and registration dates.

  • Publisher: Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de Turismo
  • Dataset: Registro de Turismo de Andalucía (OpenRTA) open data
  • Coverage in this release: province of Málaga
  • Refresh approach: controlled, rate-limited imports reviewed by our team before publication

OpenRTA publication coverage

OpenRTA is an official open-data service published by the Junta de Andalucía, and every record searchable here comes from it. Records exposed through the service carry an open-publication status, and only those flagged for publication are served. It follows that not every registration held in the underlying Registro de Turismo de Andalucía is necessarily available through OpenRTA, and how much of a category is published differs by accommodation type.

Because of that, a missing search result must not be read as proof that an accommodation is unregistered. Holiday-rental homes are published at close to full coverage. Tourist apartment establishments and hotel establishments appear only as a published subset, so a valid registration in those categories may not be found here.

  • Vivienda de uso turístico (VUT) — High OpenRTA coverage
  • Apartamento turístico (A) — Published subset
  • Establecimiento Hotelero (H) — Published subset

We do not publish a percentage figure for the tourist-apartment or hotel categories, because there is no reliable public denominator for the complete legal register.

Coverage by registration category

  • Vivienda de uso turístico (holiday-rental home) (VUT) — High OpenRTA coverage. Our Málaga VUT dataset is sourced from the Junta de Andalucía OpenRTA service and currently covers almost all VUT records exposed through that official service. It does not follow that every legally registered VUT appears here, because we can only see what OpenRTA publishes. Records held: 0.
  • Apartamento turístico (tourist apartment establishment) (A) — Published subset. OpenRTA publishes only a subset of registered tourist-apartment establishments. A registration not appearing here may still exist in the Registro de Turismo de Andalucía. Records held: 0.
  • Establecimiento hotelero (hotel establishment) (H) — Published subset. OpenRTA publishes only a subset of registered hotel establishments. A registration not appearing here may still exist in the Registro de Turismo de Andalucía. Records held: 0.

Rural tourist dwellings (VTAR) and rural houses (CR) have not been imported yet, so this checker cannot report on them.

National short-term rental identifiers

Real Decreto 1312/2024 created a national framework for short-term rentals, including the Ventanilla Única Digital de Arrendamientos and a Registro Único procedure that issued ESFCTU-style registration numbers. Judgments of the Tribunal Supremo on 19 May 2026, 21 May 2026 and 1 June 2026 annulled the core Registro Único provisions of that decree, including articles 5, 8, 9, 10 and 12(b) and (c), the relevant parts of articles 1, 2 and 6, and the other references to the single-register procedure. The Ventanilla Única Digital framework remains in the surviving consolidated legislation.

Spain Rental Licence Check does not hold an authoritative open dataset for independently validating ESFCTU numbers, and no machine-readable official source is available to us. Recognition of these identifiers on this website is therefore informational rather than verification: we explain what type of number you have entered and what its current legal status is, and we do not describe it as verified, valid or registered. Regional tourism registrations, such as an Andalucía VUT number, remain the numbers this checker actually searches. Last reviewed: August 2026.

Current coverage

  • Imported official records held, all categories: 0
  • Municipalities represented in imported records: 0
  • Most recent official import: Not recorded

How records are processed

  1. Records are retrieved from the official open-data service in small, rate-limited batches.
  2. Each record is mapped to our standard fields and its licence number is normalised.
  3. Validation checks the licence format, the province, the dates and the capacity values, and flags anything unusual.
  4. Possible duplicates and conflicting records are held back for manual review.
  5. A member of our team approves records before they can appear in search results.
  6. Changes to an existing record are recorded in that record’s change history.

What our results mean

Spain Rental Licence Check is an independent information service. A result reflects the information currently held in our database from the source above at the time of the last import. It is not an official confirmation, certificate, or legal verification, and it does not replace checking directly with the relevant authority or asking the property owner for documentation.

Official registers change over time. A record may be updated, suspended or removed at source after our most recent import. If you believe a record is inaccurate or out of date, please use our data correction request form.

Live data only

Every record you can search on this website comes from the official open-data source above. The licence checker no longer shows example or demonstration records. Coverage is currently focused on holiday-rental accommodation in the province of Málaga and is being extended as further official sources are added.