Some squatters turn a home into a vacation rental, and the owner gets hit with a $5,000 fine from the tax authorities
Deadbeat tenants stayed in the property after their lease ended in 2022 without paying a cent, and now they’re running a business out of it.
“We’ve always insisted that we’re willing to consider anyone who has a legal title, because otherwise we’d be legalizing squatting.” That was José Luis Ábalos’s blunt statement to Nadia Calviño in one of the leaked audios related to the idea from Esquerra and Podemos on illegal occupations years ago. Yet here we are in 2025, and cases like this keep popping up almost daily all over Spain.
The bigger problem is “inquilino-kupation”—that is, tenants who stop paying but wave around a lease (which is often fake to begin with). In those cases it isn’t considered a criminal occupation, and vulnerable people are protected by Royal Decree-Law 11/2020, which has been extended through the end of 2025 and prevents the eviction of anyone deemed vulnerable who has no other housing option. That leads to situations that are practically surreal, like the one described by property owner Joaquim Álvarez on RAC1.
It all started with mortgage problems
Joaquim put his house—located in the Gaudí Reus Golf Club, the former Aigüesverds golf club—up for rent in 2019 because his income was barely enough to cover the mortgage. So he, his wife, and their three kids moved to a country house. The goal was to make the mortgage payments more manageable, but problems started almost immediately. The family that rented the place also had three children and signed a three-year lease.
After the first year, the late payments began: “They kept paying later and later,” the owner said. Everything blew up in 2021: “At the beginning of 2021 they told me they couldn’t pay.” He explained that they used excuses like the pandemic or a couple’s crisis to avoid making the agreed payments. Faced with the non-payment, the owner decided not to renew the lease, which expired in 2022. However, he was met with a flat refusal from the former tenants to leave the property.
A nightmare for some… luxury living for others
Since 2021—and especially after the lease ended in 2022—the owner’s family has been living a true nightmare. They moved out so they could keep up with the mortgage, and now they neither enjoy the house nor collect any rent. The unpaid rent isn’t a one-off thing: “I haven’t received a single payment in more than three years,” Joaquim explained. Meanwhile, his “inquilino-squatters” are living the high life: “They became members of the golf club this summer, they go to the pool, they eat at the restaurant… one of the kids was even taking golf lessons.”
Unpaid rent and a $5,000 fine
The nightmare didn’t end there for Joaquim and his family. Things got even worse when he discovered his house listed on a popular vacation-rental website. It wasn’t new—the property even has reviews, confirming it has been sublet behind the owner’s back and without any permit. The real issue, however, isn’t the rental itself but the fact that it was done without a tourist-apartment license. As a result, the owner received a $5,000 fine from the Spanish tax agency (Hacienda), which is now withholding $500 a month from his paycheck for the last three months.
All of this is happening while the squatters cannot be evicted because they have a certificate of vulnerability issued by the Reus City Council. Àngels Granados, head of the city’s Social Welfare department, washes her hands of the matter and declares herself incompetent to verify whether the data supporting the vulnerability claim is real: “We are not tax inspectors, police officers, or judges.” Joaquim is not only being strangled financially—he’s also being completely ignored by the authorities.
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