The inspection services of Barcelona City Council are finalizing a fine of 420,000 euros against the owner of a building in the Gòtic neighborhood who turned his entire property into a large complex of illegal tourist apartments. The City Council itself just detailed it this Tuesday in a press release.
Municipal inspectors understand that for years this alleged multi-offender had rented for days through ads posted on Airbnb and Booking up to fourteen homes located at number 24 Ample Street, a stone's throw from the Rambla. In these situations, the policy of the Consistory is to apply the highest fine established in the Tourism Law of the Generalitat.
"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 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, in addition to generating inconvenience, contribute to the expulsion of residents from the neighborhoods.”
A few weeks ago La Vanguardia announced that the management of the City Council's inspection services were finishing processing a record fine of up to 600,000 euros against the alleged mastermind of the largest plot of illegal tourist apartments ever seen in Barcelona. This new case illustrates how the irregular rental of properties to occasional visitors became a professional and organized activity outside the law.
The strong pressure from the City Hall inspectors in recent years 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 offenders to refine their techniques and act with increasing dissimulation.
Until not long ago, the most common method consisted of renting a property and then renting 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. In this way, when the City Council detects irregular rentals to tourists and informs them that they must stop this activity, they claim that everything is their tenant's fault, that the person responsible for everything is their tenant and that they cannot do anything else. to request the termination of the contract.
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 years of investigations and suspicions. As soon as the files were one step away from being completed, the plot changed the owners of the apartments in question, thus forcing the administrative process to restart.
City Hall sources say that since 2018 the inspectors have opened successive files in relation to the activities detected at 24 Ample, while asking the digital platforms dedicated to vacation rentals to deactivate the advertisements of this plot. The owner always responded that he did not know what his tenants were doing, that they deceived him and re-rented his apartments to tourists.
