Lease Types and Tenant Rights
The type of lease you sign determines the rights you’re entitled to under Spain’s generous tenant protection laws.1 There are two distinct lease types:
Short-term
Arrendamiento para uso distinto del de vivienda
(Spanish)
Long-term
Arrendamiento de vivienda
(Spanish)
Long-term renters are fully protected, while short-term renters are only partially covered.
The difference between these two leases is based on your intention as a tenant:
- Your lease is long-term if your intention is to use the property as your habitual residence – that is, the place you call home.
- Your lease is short-term if the contract states that you only need to rent the property for a specific, time-bound purpose, like a summer house.
We’ve compared the basic rights of long-term versus short-term renters in the chart below:
| Rights | Long-term | Short-term |
|---|---|---|
| You can break the lease after six months, but you might pay an early termination fee. | ✓ | ✘ |
| Your lease auto-renews yearly with the same terms as the original contract. | ✓ | ✘ |
| The maximum deposit is one month’s rent, plus an optional two months in guarantees. | ✓ | ✘ |
| If the landlord sells the property, the new owner can’t evict you before your lease is up. | ✓ | ✘ |
| The yearly rent increase is capped at the rate of inflation set by the Consumer Price Index. | ✓ | ✘ |
| You get your deposit back within 30 days of returning the keys, minus the cost of repairs. | ✓ | ✓ |
This chart is a quick snapshot of your basic rights, but by no means does it cover all the protections you’re entitled to or the exceptions to the rules. We recommend consulting a specialist lawyer to look over your rental contract before you sign to understand your rights as a tenant based on your lease type.
If you’re not sure what type of lease you’re signing and what rights you’re entitled to, a solid clue could be the title of the rental contract:
- Your lease is likely long-term if you see “Contrato de arrendamiento de vivienda.”
- Your lease is likely short-term if you see any variation of “Contrato de arrendamiento de temporada,” “Contrato de arrendamiento para uso distinto del de vivienda,” or “Contrato de locación de temporada.”
TIP! There’s a common misconception that if your lease is for less than a year, you’re considered a short-term tenant and aren’t fully protected by the law. The length of your lease has nothing to do with your tenant rights. You can sign a short-term lease for 2 years while you’re in Spain on a work assignment or doing your PhD, or a long-term lease for 12 months as your primary residence. It’s all about intention.
Unfortunately, some landlords use short-term leases as a loophole to increase the rent indiscriminately for people who intend to stay long-term but don’t know their rights.
As you’ll recall from the chart above, a long-term lease is renewed automatically every year with the same terms as the original contract.2 As a short-term renter, however, you’d generally have to sign a new contract if you want to stay after the lease is up.
In this new contract, the landlord is free to raise the rent beyond the rate of inflation, demand more months of guarantee, or change any other terms they see fit. That’s why it’s crucial to establish your intentions with the property owner before you sign the lease and include them clearly in the contract itself.
Always consult a specialist lawyer to help you understand what type of lease you’ve been presented, if your intentions are included in the contract, and what rights you’re entitled to.
LIVED EXPERIENCE
There’s nothing inherently risky about being a short-term renter if your intention really is to get in and get out. For the price of two weeks in a cramped Airbnb, we could’ve rented a short term apartment for the first two months we were in Spain. We didn’t need strict tenant protection. We needed somewhere to stay while we figured out the long-term rental process at a sane pace and celebrated the thrill of moving to Spain.
That said, if you intended to sign a long-term lease but were tricked into signing a short-term one, talk to a trusted lawyer before confronting the landlord. Spain is serious about protecting tenants, but real estate law is tricky. One short consultation could save you thousands of euros in legal fees down the line if it turns out that you were in the wrong.
If you win the case and the judge rules that the landlord’s actions were illegal, you can include in your claim that the opposing side covers your legal fees, too. We’ve described other common rental scams in detail in a Blueprint called Are you being scammed?
A note on Airbnb and other tourist rentals
A brief note about tourist rentals, such as hotels, VRBO, Airbnb, and the like: you’re not a tenant, you’re a client. Until you sign a formal rental contract, you are not entitled to any rights or special treatment under Spain’s housing laws.
Some landlords will list their apartment as a vacation rental until they find a long-term tenant. This could be an attractive option if you decide to stay in an Airbnb for your first couple of months in Spain and fall in love with the place. You could also book one-week stays at multiple Airbnb’s, get to know the landlords and the neighborhoods, and see if the owner of the apartment you liked best is open to a long-term lease.
You’ll notice that in most big cities, booking an Airbnb or hotel by the month is significantly more expensive than renting a short-term apartment. You can do a quick sanity check by comparing the specs of your vacation rental (like the size, location, bedrooms, etc.) with a similar property in the same neighborhood on Idealista or Fotocasa. If you find that an Airbnb is twice the monthly price of a local apartment, ask yourself if the convenience of booking a tourist rental is worth the cost.
Next: Check out Common Scams →
1. Lease types and tenant rights are established by Spanish housing code, called the Ley de Arrendamiento Urbano, or LAU for short. You can check it out here. Tenants are also protected by consumer legislation. Back to text
2. The lease is renewed for up to 5 years if the owner is an individual, or up to 7 years if the owner is a company. Back to text