Spain's guest registry, untangled.
Every check-in, you have 24 hours to file your guest's details with the Spanish state. Simple to say — but the official system is old and clunky, and the "bulk upload" that's meant to save you is worse: a multi-level flat file you'd realistically need to write a program to produce. Luckily, that's my day job. Keeping our own apartment in Sitges compliant is what pushed me to build the tool I wished existed.
Stay Comply by Tourist Tax Manager
Connect your booking calendar, send each guest a link to fill in their own details, and we build the compliant file in the exact format the portal expects — checked line by line so it won't bounce. You upload it yourself, with your own login. Free for your first 3 bookings.
See how it works01Who actually has to do this
Anyone taking paid stays at a property in Spain — a tourist flat (VUT, VFT, VV, depending on the region), a room, a villa, a rural house. Foreign owners with a holiday place here. Someone managing a relative's apartment. If you list on Airbnb, Booking, Vrbo or Expedia, treat yourself as a regular host.
The law leans on the Ley Orgánica 4/2015 on public safety, and the mechanics come from Real Decreto 933/2021. Both occasional and professional hosts must file guest data; only professional hosts also keep a 3-year documentary file. The line between the two is fuzzy at the margins — when in doubt, file.
02The "I'll just photograph their passport" myth
A photo of the passport feels like enough. It's the single most common mistake I see — and it's wrong in both directions at once.
It's somehow both too much and not nearly enough.
The Spanish data-protection authority (AEPD) treats a full scan or photo of an ID as over-collection — you're not supposed to keep image copies of guests' documents at all. Yet the registry needs structured fields a photo doesn't give you:
- Place of habitual residence — full address, city and country, not just nationality
- A contact: phone or email for every adult
- For guests who live in Spain, the official province and municipality codes (the INE codes) — which the guest themselves almost never knows
- Document support number for Spanish DNI/TIE — printed separately, not always on the photo page
And here's the part nobody warns you about: the exact fields change with where the guest is from. A Spanish guest has a second surname and a support number; a foreign guest gives a passport number and country of issue, and leaves the second-surname field blank. Get the combination wrong and the file is rejected.
03The process, in three moves
Register
Enrol as an accommodation provider before your first guest. This is the step most people skip — and skipping it is the expensive mistake.
Collect
Gather the right fields for each guest — they differ by nationality. Far easier done before arrival than on the doorstep.
File
Submit to the right portal within 24 hours of check-in, logged in with your own Spanish digital certificate or Cl@ve.
04Nobody arrives on holiday wanting paperwork
Think about the moment your guest walks in. They've flown, driven, dragged a suitcase up your stairs, and they want to drop their bags and find the beach — not stand in the hallway dictating passport numbers while you type. Do it at check-in and it's awkward for both of you. Forget it, and your 24-hour clock is already running.
The fix is to move the form before arrival. The guest fills it in from the sofa at home, days ahead; you arrive at check-in already compliant, with nothing to chase on the doorstep.
Stay Comply by Tourist Tax Manager
Keeping our own place in Sitges compliant convinced us hosts needed something simpler, so we built it. Connect your booking calendar, send each guest a link, and they enter the right details for their country before they arrive — we turn it into a registry-ready file. Their check-in becomes "here's the key." You still upload it yourself, under your own login.
See how it works05One catch: not everywhere files to the same place
Catalonia and the Basque Country go their own way.
Property in Catalonia (our Sitges flat included) files to the Mossos d'Esquadra registry, not the national one. Property in the Basque Country files to the Ertzaintza. Everywhere else — Madrid, Andalusia, Valencia, the Balearics, the Canaries — it's SES.Hospedajes. Sending Catalan data to SES doesn't count, and vice versa.
06If a fine comes
Minor
Late filing, incomplete or inaccurate data, good-faith errors.
Serious
Never registering as a provider, omitting filings entirely, repeated minor breaches.
Penalties trace to Ley Orgánica 4/2015, articles 36–38. What changed in 2025 is that the administration moved from warnings to actual sanction proceedings — and platforms began cross-checking host registration. The quiet risk isn't only the fine; it's your listing being pulled.
Where this comes from
I'm a host, not a lawyer — so everything here traces back to a primary source. Check them yourself; that's the point.
Real Decreto 933/2021
The decree that created the obligation and lists the data fields (Anexo I). BOE núm. 258, 28 Oct 2021.
Read the decreeLey Orgánica 4/2015
The public-safety law that authorises the registry and sets the penalty bands (arts. 25–27, 36–38).
Read the lawSES.Hospedajes
The state platform where most of Spain files. Sede electrónica; needs a digital certificate or Cl@ve.
Official portalLet the guest do the paperwork — before they arrive
One property or ten, in Sitges or Seville: Stay Comply collects each guest's details in the right format for where they're from, resolves the fiddly official codes, and hands you a registry-ready file. We're hosts who got tired of the maze — and it's growing to handle the other headache of renting abroad, collecting tourist tax, too. You still upload under your own login.
See how it works