Málaga now has more tourist beds than hospital beds
A walk through the historic centre where the doorbells have keypads and the corner shops have become luggage lockers.
12,400+
Registered tourist flats
Stand on Calle Larios at noon and count the wheelie suitcases. Then count the keypads on the doorways. In Málaga's historic centre, more than one in three homes is now some form of tourist accommodation.
The city has crossed a symbolic threshold: registered tourist beds outnumber hospital beds. It's a gimmick statistic, sure — but gimmicks stick because they point at something true. A city's housing stock is finite, and every unit that serves visitors is one that doesn't serve the people who make the city run.
Waiters at the port restaurants commute forty minutes from the outskirts. The teachers at the high school two streets from the cathedral live with their parents. The people who keep Málaga alive can't afford to be in it.
The regional government's new registry rules are a start, not an answer. We'll be back in the winter, when the tourists leave and the rents stay.