Start with what hasn’t happened: no law currently stops or limits anyone from buying a home in the Canary Islands. What did happen, on 13 October, is that the Canarian government laid out in Parliament two separate requests to be able to do so in future. If you are weighing a purchase, or have one under way, read them calmly and without panic.
The first request goes to Brussels. The week before, the regional government sent the Spanish foreign ministry a set of amendments to the draft EU regulation on affordable housing. The text would let authorities in outermost regions, islands and certain coastal regions temporarily regulate, restrict or limit the purchase, use or rental of residential property by non-resident foreigners. Measures could cover areas larger than a single municipality, scaled to the housing emergency. Public works, housing and mobility minister Pablo Rodríguez pointed to Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, the one on outermost regions: “We are not asking for a privilege, we are asking that the Regulation apply Article 349.”
Rodríguez said the amendments don’t seek to change the regulation’s general framework for the Union as a whole, and that restrictions would be short-term and paired with policies that raise supply, especially affordable housing. The regulation is still in the pipeline and Spanish regions don’t sit at the EU Council, so the Canarian government wrote to three ministries (Foreign Affairs, Housing and Urban Agenda, Territorial Policy) asking them to back the amendments in negotiations.
The second route is national. The regional government’s lawyers have drafted a state-level bill to limit home purchases by non-resident foreigners in the archipelago, and the text is already with the Spanish government. President Fernando Clavijo asked for the Council of Ministers to approve it before the end of the legislature. The sources I read don’t give the bill’s content, so we don’t know who would count as a non-resident, whether EU citizens would be treated differently, or whether existing contracts would be touched. Those are open questions, and it would be wrong to answer them for the people who have to decide.
The debate sits in a European context that is shifting. The European Commission is preparing its strategy on the right to stay, and on 23 September the Bureau of the Committee of the Regions adopted the Mullingar Declaration, which lists housing among the investments needed for people to remain in their territories.
One more item from these same days: the Canarian government has opened public consultation on the file that would declare the whole municipality of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria a stressed residential market zone. Objections can be filed from 15 October to 12 November 2026. It is a different tool, aimed at rentals, but it shows housing is being tackled at several tables at once.
For expats living in the Canaries or planning to, the practical point is this: until the regulation and the bill pass, nothing changes. The political direction is stated, though, and the next few months in Brussels and at the Council of Ministers are worth watching.
