The Consumer Affairs Ministry has blocked 65,000 Airbnb listings it considers "illegal."

Airbnb has received a blow in its ongoing dispute with the Ministry of Consumer Affairs. According to a statement, the department headed by Pablo Bustinduy—on the Sumar side of the government—has urged the vacation rental platform to remove a total of 65,935 listings it considers "illegal" for violating regulations governing advertising for this type of accommodation.

These homes are located in different autonomous communities, and all are fully-equipped tourist accommodations; that is, there are no single rooms.

This decision comes after the Madrid High Court issued a ruling upholding the Consumer Affairs Ministry's actions, which the platform had appealed in an attempt to avoid the block. According to the Ministry, it has sent up to three resolutions to the company in recent months, "resolutions in which this company was urged to block this advertising," the Ministry's statement reads.

Well, now the Supreme Court of Justice has ruled in favor of the government with a ruling—issued last Friday—requiring Airbnb to immediately remove 5,800 vacation rental listings; not only from the Community of Madrid, but also from Andalusia, Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, and the Basque Country. A ruling isn't a verdict, but it still provides arguments for the department headed by Pablo Bustinduy.

Specifically, the Consumer Affairs Department claims to have detected three irregularities. The most common—among the ads that have been investigated—is the failure to include the license or registration number, a requirement required by several regional regulations. Furthermore, some ads fail to indicate the legal status of the landlords—whether they are professionals or individuals—a fact that, let's not forget, is crucial to determining whether the person making the contract is protected as a consumer. The list of violations continues, culminating in the identification among the ads analyzed of license numbers that do not correspond to those issued by the authorities.

The offensive doesn't end there. The Ministry assures that it is working on complementary actions to those that other authorities and levels of government may develop and has offered them technical assistance, among other things, "to put an end to the thousands of illegal advertisements detected," the statement reads.

This is the latest chapter in a war that began last June, when the government requested information from a certain platform—the name was still unknown, although it was suspected—about thousands of ads it was running without a license. The company's refusal to remove the ads was followed by a disciplinary action in December. This action will continue beyond today's announcement, which in any case redoubles the pressure on the US multinational.