MADRID (AP) — Spain has ordered Airbnb to block more than 65,000 holiday listings on its platform for having violated rules, the Consumer Rights Ministry said Monday.
The ministry said that many of the 65,935 Airbnb listings it had ordered to be withdrawn did not include their license number or specify whether the owner was an individual or a company. Others listed numbers that didn't match what authorities had, it said.
Spain is grappling with a housing affordability crisis that has spurred government action against short-term rental companies.
In recent months, tens of thousands of Spaniards have taken to the streets protesting rising housing and rental costs, which many say have been driven up by holiday rentals on platforms like Airbnb that have proliferated in cities like Madrid and Barcelona and many other popular tourist destinations.
“Enough already with protecting those who make a business out of the right to housing,” Consumer Minister Pablo Bustinduy told reporters on Monday.
Airbnb said that it would appeal the decision. Through a spokesperson, the company said it did not think the ministry was authorized to rule on short-term rentals — and that it had utilized “an indiscriminate methodology” to include Airbnb rentals that do not need a license to operate.
Last year, Barcelona announced a plan to close down all of the 10,000 apartments licensed in the city as short-term rentals by 2028 to safeguard the housing supply for full-time residents.
The ministry said it had notified Airbnb of the noncompliant listings months ago, but that the company had appealed the move in court.
Spain's government said Madrid’s high court had backed the order sent to Airbnb. Bustinduy said it involved the immediate removal of 5,800 rental listings from the site. Two subsequent orders would be issued until the nearly 66,000 removals are reached, he said.
Spain's government said the first round of affected properties were located across the country, including in the capital, Madrid, as well as in the regions of Andalusia and Catalonia, whose capital is Barcelona.
FILE - Demonstrators march shouting slogans against the Formula 1 Barcelona Fan Festival in downtown Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, June 19, 2024, during residents protest against mass tourism. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)
ATLANTA (AP) — Rep. Mike Collins on Tuesday defeated first-time candidate Derek Dooley for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Georgia, advancing to face Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff for a seat that will help determine control of Capitol Hill for the final years of Donald Trump’s second presidency.
President Donald Trump will be a key fault line in the general election matchup. Collins, who was endorsed by Trump on Sunday, has identified closely with the president since he first won his House seat in north Georgia in 2022. A trucking company owner and son of a congressman, Collins campaigns as a self-described “MAGA warrior.”
Ossoff, first elected in 2020, has blasted Trump as a “national embarrassment” who is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family. The 39-year-old is the lone Senate Democrat running in a state that Trump won in 2024. Democrats face tremendous pressure to hold his seat as they try to gain a net of four seats to claim a Senate majority.
Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate contest in Georgia since 2016, Trump’s first election.
Despite his ties to Trump and the Republican base, Collins has argued that he can build a broad coalition, and he plans to use immigration as a contrast with Ossoff. In the House, Collins sponsored the Laken Riley Act, a 2025 law that requires immigrants accused of certain crimes to be detained. It is named for a Georgia nursing student killed in 2021 by a Venezuelan man who was in the U.S. illegally. Ossoff voted against a version of the legislation before backing the final proposal after Trump’s return to power.
Collins won the nomination despite his Republican opponents highlighting a House ethics complaint that accuses him of abusing taxpayer funds by paying the girlfriend of his former top adviser for congressional job duties she allegedly did not fulfill. After an initial investigation, a federal panel forwarded the matter to the House Ethics Committee.
The congressman begins his general election campaign at a financial disadvantage. Collins raised about $4.9 million through the end of May, and reported having less than $1.2 million remaining. Through late April, the last time Ossoff had to file before his primary, the incumbent had raised $60.4 million and had $32.5 million on hand.
Georgia voters also were nominating a Republican in the gubernatorial contest to face former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat.
Trump picked his candidate for governor 10 months ago, endorsing Burt Jones, the Georgia lieutenant governor who was part of Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat to former President Joe Biden. In that race, it was Kemp who made a late-hour endorsement, announcing his support for Jones on Sunday.
The power of Trump's endorsement — and Kemp's — is being tested by billionaire Rick Jackson, whose campaign has spent more than $100 million, mostly out of his own pocket, to win the nomination.
Polls closed at 7 p.m.
Voters Jenny Beth Martin and Debbie Dooley — who has no relation to Derek Dooley — were split over which Republican has the best chance of defeating Ossoff.
Martin, who supported Collins, says energizing the conservative base is necessary to protect Republican majorities that aren’t populated with Republican “anti-Trumpers” or “liberals like Jon Ossoff.”
But Debbie Dooley, who voted for Derek Dooley, said Collins has too much baggage and is too closely tied to the far-right to win.
“He will drag down the whole Republican ticket in Georgia,” she predicted. “This is about actually winning. It’s not about just following Donald Trump.”
The president’s preferred primary candidates have a strong record so far in 2026. But none have faced a self-funded rival with Jackson’s spending power.
Jackson, a 71-year-old business owner, amassed a fortune from his company that provides contract healthcare personnel, and he's used it to blanket television and online platforms with ads. Appealing to hard core Trump supporters, he’s pledged that immigrants in Georgia illegally will be “deported or departed.” He promises a slew of tax cuts. And previewing a potential general election argument, he’s played up his biography as a product of the state foster care system and featured his grandchildren advising him on how to make friendlier ads.
Jones, 47, comes from a wealthy family but is running a more modest campaign. Framing himself as a “proven leader,” Jones proposes eliminating Georgia’s state income tax — without detailing how he’d make up the revenue. And he trumpets his presidential seal of approval and time as a University of Georgia football player in the 1990s. As lieutenant governor, Jones pushed legislation that ultimately did not pass but would have disqualified Jackson’s company from receiving taxpayer-funded contracts.
Trump did not travel to Georgia to campaign with Jones but he's given the lieutenant governor a fresh round of support on social media and called in to a telephone rally during the early voting period.
“Burt was strongly committed to my Campaign in 2016, 2020, and 2024, and worked tirelessly to help us WIN. He has been with us from the very beginning,” Trump posted on Truth Social last week.
Georgia's secretary of state race was open for the first time since Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election, famously pressuring outgoing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,800 votes” to overtake Biden. Raffensberger refused.
For his potential successor, Republicans were left to choose between an outright election denier, Vernon Jones, and a state lawmaker, Tim Fleming, who avoids explicitly disputing the president’s 2020 election lies. They went with Fleming, who won the nomination on Tuesday.
Jones, a perennial candidate who was once a Democrat, embraced Trump’s “stop the steal” movement and said he stood “with those who believe there was election fraud.” Fleming, who once served as deputy secretary of state, has said there were “irregularities” in 2020, a word choice that has become code for Republicans who want neither to ratify nor call out Trump’s errant claims.
Democrats voted for Penny Brown Reynolds — a former state judge in Fulton County who also served in the Biden administration as deputy assistant secretary for civil rights for the Department of Agriculture — over Dana Barrett, a Fulton County commissioner.
A woman speaks to a Fulton County Election worker before she votes in a runoff election at the C.T. Martin Recreation Center, Tuesday, June 16, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
U.S. Rep Mike Collins campaigns in Woodstock, Ga., Sunday, June 14, 2026. ( AP Photo/Bill Barrow)
FILE - Gov. Brian Kemp, center left, and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Derek Dooley greet supporters at campaign stop for Dooley at Farmview Market in Madison, Ga., on May 8, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)
