The national rental register is dead. Your obligations are not.

If you let a property on the Costa, you have probably seen it shared: Spain's Supreme Court has struck down the national rental register. One less form. The relief is real, and it is also the wrong read.

On 21 May, the Supreme Court annulled the part of Royal Decree 1312/2024 that created the national Registro Único de Arrendamientos — single rental register, and the registration number that had been mandatory since 1 July 2025. The court did not say short-term lets are fine. It said the State has no power to run a national register on top of the ones the regions already keep. A competence ruling, not a deregulation.

So the national code is gone, and the annual declaration that came with it. What is left is the part that actually governs you here.

The day the register fell, the Ministry of Housing wrote to the Junta de Andalucía — the Andalusian regional government and told it to act on more than 27,000 tourist properties the Land Registry had already flagged as illegal in the region. It added that it would be "very vigilant" that the Junta did.

The Junta did not shrug. It has put the Plan de Inspección Turística de Andalucía 2026 — Andalusian Tourism Inspection Plan 2026 before parliament, and is finalising a law that lifts fines on illegal lets to between €10,000 and €100,000, and to €600,000 in the worst cases. Confirmed 7 June 2026. "Register abolished" and "€600,000 fines in preparation" are the same news, a fortnight apart.

Your obligation now runs entirely through the Registro de Turismo de Andalucía — Andalusian tourism register, the RTA. You file the declaration online with the Junta and receive a code in the form VFT/MA followed by a number. That code, not the dead national one, is what must appear on every listing you run: Airbnb, Booking, your own page.

Guest details still go to the police through the SES.Hospedajes system. And from this year, there is a sustainability declaration to file, plus new grounds for the Junta to suspend a registration while it checks it. None of that changed on 21 May. If anything, it is now the part carrying the weight.

First, confirm that your RTA registration is live and that the VFT code is visible on every platform you use. With the national layer gone and the Junta under orders to find 27,000 non-compliant properties, the regional paperwork is what gets you fined.

Second, if you paid a fee for the national register before it was struck down, you paid it under a rule the court has now called illegal. There is a route to reclaim that tasa — the official fee — and it is worth asking about before the window narrows.

Vivienda con Fines Turísticos — registered tourist-use home. The VFT is the Andalusian status your let needs; the code, in the form VFT/MA/00000, is what platforms require and what an inspector asks for first.

Tasa — official administrative fee. The charge you paid for the now-annulled national register. A fee paid under a rule later ruled illegal is, in principle, recoverable.

The national register is gone, and the relief that came with it lasted about a fortnight. The obligation did not disappear; it moved down a floor to Andalucía, which has just been handed 27,000 names to chase and a law with €600,000 teeth. Less paperwork from Madrid, more attention from the Junta. The one thing worth your half hour this week is making sure the code still showing on your listing is the regional one that counts.

If you would rather not sort which of your obligations survived and which died, that is exactly what our Navigator does: confirm your RTA standing, get the right code onto your listings, and check whether your old national fee is reclaimable. €49 a month, no lock-in, and a long way short of €600,000.

Not bad for a Monday — A. and their flats duly registered, WaypointSur team.