More than 10,000 tourist apartments in Barcelona experienced a small earthquake yesterday with the green light from Parliament for the urgent measures decree on restricting housing for tourist use. Small because there is still a lot left to write and any changes to the current range of apartments being rented out daily to travelers may take a few years to see. But the earthquake because it opens the door to putting an end to a lifelong business that until now meant obtaining one of these licenses. Mayor Jaume Colbone He praised the decree and stressed that it would “rearrange” the width of the city and reduce it to “the most tense areas, such as the Ciutat Vela area.” Everything points to the redistribution of places in the new (or modified) Private Urban Tourist Accommodation Plan (PEUAT).
“It is a success for Barcelona to have a roster like this,” insisted the Socialist. Specifically, support sun The government has been allowed to push the measure forward in Parliament, although introducing the condition that it be limited to 140 municipalities with a strained housing market and that each municipality decides the maximum. A filter that would help localities that support economic activity, as long as they do not suffer from a housing deficit, but that would have very different consequences in cases like Barcelona, where Colboni reiterated that he cannot “afford more than 10,000 dwellings” zoned homes that have no other use. “Only to live in it.
New planning licence
In order to carry out tourism activities, as stipulated in the decree, it will be necessary to process a new urban planning license that will have a temporary limit of five years, although it has been added that it will be automatically extended if the urban planner allows it.
However, modifications can go further. According to the latest official census of 2022 (which does not include the hundreds of apartments that received a license due to a legal loophole in their local regulations), the center of Barcelona has just over 600 licenses, which is down from the more than 725 that focus only on the Gràcia neighborhood, or from Among more than 1,600 neighborhoods in Drita del Eixample. The Eixample district has the most apartments in Barcelona, although it is more spread out due to its size and structure.
Colboni now notes that the ordinance is a necessary tool for apartment housing, and offers “congratulations” to the PSC units for negotiating. “In the case of Barcelona, the regulation that allows us to set boundaries is the Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodation (PEUAT),” recalls Colboni. The changes to the ordinance mean it must be treated as a bill, which must be approved before March 31. From this date, and after seeing the extent of the regulation’s reach, the councils will move the file forward.
In order to limit apartment licences, the capital will have to establish an objective technical standard that will act as a filter and avoid accusations of arbitrary rejection. The main factor will be “density”. For practical purposes, the effects of the regulation will appear in the next state, because owners of tourist apartments have five years to obtain the new license and are expected to delay the application until the nature of the filter becomes clear. In Barcelona. Those who expect they will not meet it will have until 2029 to apply for planning permission.
The new panorama has set Barcelona’s employers on fire. The president of the Barcelona Tourist Apartments Association (Apartur), Enrique Alcantara, believes that the city is “losing the competitiveness” to organize large conferences and congresses, and warns again that within five years “it will not have the capacity to host events such as the Mobile World Congress, the World Cup America Sailing, and the ISE Audiovisual Exhibition.” He considers it an “anti-tourism decree” and specifically targets Barcelona’s economy and tourism activity.
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