Why do I need my passport for a holiday villa in Spain?

The passport is becoming an obligation for the travelers interested in a holiday villa in Spain.

The passport is not only a document required in airports or in other exceptional cases of identification, as it is also necessary in case of wanting to rent a holiday villa in Spain. So if you are thinking of renting a holiday villa in Spain for your next holiday period, you may know that the passport or a copy of this document is essential for the validity of the contract.

As it is specified in the actual legislation, the owners of any apartment or villa have the obligation to notify the entrance and the exit of all the over sixteen years old guests, providing also to the police the following information: name, surnames, number of the identity document, type of document, date of birth, gender and nationality. This information can be provided by the renter to the police face-to-face, by telematics or by fax.

Therefore, in case that the renter cannot provide this information to the pertinent authorities, he or she is exposed, as it is specified in the organic law 4/2015, to a fine from 600€ to 30.000€. So it wouldn’t be very strange the prohibition of the stay by the renter. The deadline to deliver all this information is 24 hours after the entrance of the guest.

Besides, as regards the rental of any holiday villa in Spain, every autonomous community stablishes its own regulation. In the case, for example, of Catalunya, since 2012 it is obligatory to provide a copy of the passports or of the identity documents to the owner of the villa or apartment, so he or she can deliver them to the police authorities.

In the case of Catalunya and of other autonomous communities, the legal requirements must be very clear so that the signature of the contract can be valid and legal. And more if we take into account that in the case of the Catalan autonomous community, the boom of the illegal rental vacation houses in Spain is resulting on a more intensified control of the authorities and of the administration. In fact, in some areas of cities as Barcelona, these illegal rentals are becoming a social problem that is causing some serious conflicts and protests.

So if the ethics or the prevention are making you to legally look for a holidays villa in Spain for your next holidays period, you have to take into account that the availability of the passport or of a copy of that, even to inform or to deliver it to the owner of the villa or apartment, is essential to assure your stay and to avoid being left without accommodation, a situation that, depending on your destination, can results on a real and strong headache.