Tourists still happily enter and leave the large complex of illegal tourist apartments in the Gòtic neighborhood of Barcelona. The City Council made public yesterday that it is finalizing a fine of 420,000 euros against the owner of number 24 Ample Street for renting most of his apartments for days and without any type of permit, and doing so in a repeated and systematic manner. The large fine, however, does not seem to intimidate the owner of this property. There are fourteen floors of about 150 m2 each, conveniently divided in order to accommodate as many tourists as possible. We are truly talking about a pioneer of these activities. Municipal inspectors have been investigating these practices since 2018. That year, La Vanguardia also explained the regrets of the last residents of this building.
A few residents on this side of the Gòtic say that they acquired the number 24 a few decades ago. At that time, the Gòtic still seemed like a normal and ordinary neighborhood, and in this vertically owned estate, a teacher, a family of jewelers, Dr. Lluc and his daughters, who had many suitors, lived with rental contracts mostly for old rents. .. The truth is that all the neighbors knew each other, the children played on the landings, the doors of the homes remained open... But little by little some began to die and others moved to properties with much fewer stairs. No elevator works here. From those bucolic times, only the tenants of a couple of apartments remain. This story also explains how the much-vaunted expulsion of residents from the neighborhoods comes about.
“Tourists began to see tourists in this building around 2014,” they say now on Ample Street. “The worst people always came, kids who only came to the city to get drunk and get involved.” “It couldn't be any other way. “You read customer comments on the internet and they are all complaints about the dirt and poor condition of the floors.” “The troubles are so big that the residents of the properties next door and across the street also call the Urban Police.” “Sometimes they would put a man sitting on a chair at the entrance to maintain a bit of order at night.” “The City Hall inspectors have been stopping by here every now and then for a long time.” “Maybe they change their profile on the internet and things like that, to hide it a bit, but…” “Christmas is being a joke. The flow of tourists is permanent!” “And all your life, always, if you say something to the owner, he tells you very sorry that everything is a matter of his tenants, that they are the ones who dedicate themselves to renting out the rooms to tourists, that they are deceiving him and putting him in trouble. a lot of trouble.” “And we all believed it all!” “Yes, the supposed tenants were very rude. Some even threatened you if you complained!”
But City Hall inspectors understand that these tenants are really straw tenants, pieces of a framework designed to hide the systematic nature of these real estate rackets. "We are talking about a real scam carried out by an owner that comes to an end thanks to a long and intense investigation by the Urban Police and the management of the City Council's inspection services," says Albert Batlle, deputy mayor for Security and Safety. councilor responsible for the Ciutat Vella district. They had everything very well set up, but every day we are better prepared to face them. This sanction is exemplary in nature and is a warning to all those who are willing to do business with irregular use of the home. These practices have no place in Barcelona. In addition to causing inconvenience, they contribute to the expulsion of residents from the neighborhoods.”
This trick greatly complicates the work of the municipal inspectors, since they have to demonstrate that the straw tenant is indeed a straw tenant, that he does not live there, that he probably does not even live in Barcelona, that he is doing nothing other than misleading. In fact, this sanction of 420,000 euros still pending is the result of many years of investigations and suspicions, so much so that one ends up wondering if the Barcelona City Council has all the necessary legal tools to combat this type of systematic multi-offenders. As soon as the files were one step away from being completed, the plot changed the owners of the apartments in question and, in this way, forced the municipal inspectors to restart the administrative process.
The strong pressure from the City Hall inspectors, especially that exerted during the first term of Mayor Ada Colau, wiped out that multitude of small individuals who tried to pay their rent and get a few euros through irregular, often occasional subleases. But this same municipal pressure also led the most persistent and professional offenders to refine their techniques and act with increasing dissimulation.
Until not long ago, the most common method among the most organized offenders was to rent a property and then rent it out for days to tourists until the owner managed to recover his property. For some time now, however, City Hall inspectors have increasingly encountered landlords who try to hide their dealings by signing long-term rental contracts with straw tenants.
