Fuengirola has the densest apartment stock on the Costa del Sol per square kilometre, and that is the lens through which every licensing question here needs to be read. A typical 1970s or 1980s block above the seafront — Los Boliches, Torreblanca, the Carvajal strip — runs to forty, sixty, sometimes eighty units. The 3/5 community vote in a building of that size does not behave like the 3/5 vote in a twelve-unit Marbella casco antiguo block. It behaves like a small general election.
This is the 2026 VUT guide for Fuengirola owners, written from our office in Arroyo de la Miel where we manage rental in Fuengirola properties through every step.
Why building size matters
The April 2025 amendment to the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal introduced the three-fifths threshold without distinguishing between a six-unit building and a hundred-unit one. In practice, the two cases play out very differently. In a small block you can get to 3/5 with a single energetic AGM. In a sixty-unit Los Boliches tower with absentee owners across eight countries you cannot.
Fuengirola's response has been pragmatic. Many of the largest comunidades have moved to written-vote and digital-signature processes — recorded through the administrador de fincas — to collect the 3/5 majority outside the AGM itself. The Spanish Civil Code permits this, and most of the major Fuengirola administradores have systems in place. We have seen comunidades collect the threshold this way over six to eight weeks in buildings where assembling a quorum in person had become impractical.
What a VUT actually is, briefly
A VUT (Vivienda con Fines Turísticos) is the regional licence the Junta de Andalucía grants under Decreto 31/2024. Without it there is no legal short-let; the platforms — Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO — will not accept a listing, and the SES.HOSPEDAJES guest-registration system cannot be configured.
The licence is per-property, granted regionally, and must be paired with an NRUA national entry under Royal Decree 1312/2024 since July 2025. The Fuengirola Ayuntamiento has been pragmatic on tourism — there is no municipal cap, no saturation register, and no parallel local-licence layer.
How the 3/5 vote plays out in Fuengirola, sub-area by sub-area
Los Boliches — the dense apartment belt north of the centre — is overwhelmingly investor-owned with a long short-let tradition. Vote outcomes in 2025-2026 have leaned heavily towards permitting. The buildings here have always carried tourist traffic and the comunidades reflect that.
Torreblanca and Carvajal — the eastern Cercanías-served strip — sit closer to a 50/50 mix of investor-owners and longer-tenured residents, many of whom hold long-let tenants rather than tourist guests. Votes here have been more variable. Buildings with stronger administrador-led communications have generally found majorities; buildings without have stalled.
Las Rampas and the Plaza de la Hispanidad area — central, with a mix of older traditional Spanish-owner blocks and newer investor-acquired stock — has been mixed. Older blocks with stable long-stay tenancies have sometimes voted restrictively; investor-heavy blocks have leaned permissive.
Doña Sofía / Doña Pepa and the seafront strip towards Calahonda — primarily investor-held — has tended to vote permissive when votes have happened.
The Fuengirola hills and the inland edge — lower density, more townhouse and semi-detached stock, smaller comunidades — has been pragmatic, with votes typically resolving at AGMs without long debate.
The licence step itself
Where the vote position is clear, the Junta's declaración responsable is straightforward. Submit the form, the technical paperwork, and the licence number issues — usually within five working days. There is no Fuengirola-specific municipal stamp on top.
For a property already operating a grandfathered pre-April-2025 VUT, the licence continues under its original terms. The owner's only ongoing obligation is the annual Modelo N2.
The NRUA gate
Since 1 July 2025, every active VUT has needed a parallel NRUA registration. The platforms verify NRUA at listing time and block listings that lack it. The application follows the VUT (it needs the licence number) and is short — but it is the practical gating event between licence approval and a live listing. We file it the day the licence comes through.
Modelo N2 — annual, not optional
Each February, the active VUT files a Modelo N2 with the Junta covering the prior calendar year — short, administrative, but consequential. A missed N2 flags the licence; a flagged licence that is allowed to lapse falls back under the new 3/5 rule rather than grandfathering. We prepare the N2 from the monthly statements through the year so the data is ready before the deadline.
What a Fuengirola onboarding really looks like
In a comunidad where the vote has been settled favourably:
- Day 0 — declaración responsable submitted
- Days 1-5 — Junta licence approved
- Days 5-10 — NRUA registration filed and confirmed
- From Day 10 — listings live, SES.HOSPEDAJES configured
In a comunidad where the vote is still in progress — and in Fuengirola, in 2026, that often means a written-vote canvass coordinated by the administrador — the timeline depends on the administrador's process. Six to eight weeks for a clean canvass is a realistic figure; longer if there are language gaps with international owners.
Where we help most
The single most useful intervention for a Fuengirola owner is the pre-purchase comunidad-minutes read. In a forty-unit block the answer is rarely visible from the outside — the seller may be operating an apartment under a grandfathered licence in a building that has since voted differently, and the buyer would have no way to know without the minutes.
We do this read for every property we consider managing, and we offer it during a free discovery call for any owner who has not yet signed.
