The Superior Court of Justice of Aragon has ruled in favor of an owner who was forced by the Jaca City Council to cease the activity of his tourist home for not having authorization from the community of neighbors. Considers that this requirement is not covered by the regulations and represents an undue limitation. And the Horizontal Property Law establishes that the community can limit or prohibit this activity, but it does not indicate that the permission of the neighbors is needed to have a property. tourist apartmentunless there is a valid prohibition or limitation in the statutes or adopted in accordance with the law.
According to the ruling of March 25, 2026, the conflict arose when the City Council ordered that the apartment provisionally stop being used as a tourist home upon understanding that it did not comply with the General Urban Planning Plan, which required the permission from the community of owners.
The affected person initially appealed the municipal resolution before the Contentious-Administrative Court of Huesca, which endorsed the decision of the City Council and dismissed his claim. After this first unfavorable ruling, the owner filed an appeal before the Superior Court of Justice of Aragon, insisting that the law does not require obtaining authorization from the community of owners.
The TSJ annuls the order due to expiration and refuses to require permission from the neighbors
The Superior Court of Justice of Aragon annulled the City Council’s order due to a determining defect in the administrative procedure, which is that the Administration exceeded the maximum period of six months without issuing a resolution, which caused its expiration in accordance with the applicable urban planning regulations.
However, he also began to assess the substance of the matter given the repetition of this type of conflict. In this sense, The TSJ pointed out that as established by the Horizontal Property Law, in its article 17.12, communities of owners can limit, condition or prohibit this activity by agreement adopted by a qualified majority of three-fifths of owners and quotas.
However, this rule does not establish in any case the obligation to obtain prior authorization from the community of neighbors to carry out the activity, but only the possibility of imposing restrictions if so agreed in accordance with the law.
Along the same lines, the regional regulations of Aragon (Decree 80/2015 on housing for tourist use) require that in order to have one of these homes, the community statutes do not prohibit or limit tourist use, but neither does it impose the need to have express permission from the neighbors.
For the TSJ, the City Council exceeded its powers by requiring said authorization, introducing a requirement not provided for either in civil legislation or in tourism sector regulations. Furthermore, it considers that it improperly interpreted the urban planning, since it is not applicable to housing for tourist use in this case.
Furthermore, he warned that this requirement represented an alteration of the legal system, since it conditioned the exercise of an economic activity, protected by the principles of freedom of business included in articles 33 and 38 of the Constitution, to the decision of a private body such as the community of owners.
They also rejected the application of the doctrine of the Supreme Court on tourist housingwhen referring to cases in which the communities of owners themselves had established prohibitions in their statutes, and not to cases like the present one, in which it is the Administration that imposes requirements not provided for in the regulations.
For all these reasons, TSJ made it clear that authorization from the community of owners cannot be required to allocate a home for tourist use if there is no valid prior prohibition adopted in accordance with the Horizontal Property Law.
However, the sentence could be appealed to the Supreme Court.