Barcelona weighs down the reactivation of building in Catalonia

The College of Architects of Catalonia (COAC) has approved building projects of 2,378,435 m2 in the first half of the year, 17.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
21 July 2022 Thursday 04:57
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Barcelona weighs down the reactivation of building in Catalonia

The College of Architects of Catalonia (COAC) has approved building projects of 2,378,435 m2 in the first half of the year, 17.91% more than in the first half of 2021 (when the sector began to normalize after the impact of covid) and 1.92% more than in the first half of 2019, the last pre-pandemic.

The Catalan data is weighed down by the poor performance of the capital, Barcelona. Thus, according to data from the College, the approved area has fallen by 22.67%, with the greatest decreases in the area of ​​approved housing (down 29.75% compared to last year), and newly created housing (-31 .27%). Globally, in the city, new construction permits, for all uses, have fallen by 12.87% and rehabilitation projects by 46.79%. Non-residential building permits also fell by 17.7%. In total, projects of 302,362 m2 were approved in the capital, a figure that has remained practically stable in the first semesters since 2016.

The dean of the COAC, Guim Costa Calsamiglia, recognized that part of this impact is due to the law that obliges 30% of the flats in new construction or rehabilitation promotions to be allocated to social housing. "Only one project with these characteristics has entered the COAC, and it is still in the pipeline," he acknowledged. "However, I am not sure that this is the only cause and we must recognize the social value of the objective of this regulation, which is to make a more diverse city."

According to data from the college, despite the drop in activity in the capital, the Barcelona demarcation has indeed grown (16.57% more surface area approved) due to the increase in building activity outside the capital, which increases by 34.75% compared to the first half of 2021. In the rest of the demarcations, the visa area also increased by 45.47% in Tarragona, 32.6% in Lleida, 17.6% in Girona, 4 .84% in the Central Regions and fell by 28.9% in the Ebro.

In Catalonia as a whole, and in all the demarcations except the Ebro, permits to build housing have increased (up 19.23%, to 1,668,944 m2, with a total of 7,852 homes, 26% more than last year) as well as building permits for other uses.

In approvals for non-residential buildings, activity in the office sector stands out, with 165,332 m2 approved (23% more than a year ago) and hospitality (98,951 m2, 126% more than in the first half of 2021). In third place is the industrial and logistics warehouses sector (96,467 m2, 4.3% less). Approvals to build health facilities have risen 27%, to 89,369 m2, while activity in the education sector has sunk, with 44,080 m2 approved, 80% less than a year ago.

The COAC highlights that the rehabilitation activity is still very low and anticipates that "the effect of the Next Generation European recovery funds will still take a few months to be verified". Although new construction permits have risen by 26.3% compared to the first half of last year, rehabilitation has fallen by 4.16%, representing only 23% of the total surface approved. Costa recalled that "in Catalonia we have one of the oldest building stocks built in Europe, with 70% prior to 1980" the year in which the regulations were introduced that required maintaining quality standards in building. Rehabilitation, he reminded himself, must recover urban centers and allow the city not only to grow by occupying more territory. "For this, beyond the rehabilitation of individual homes, a collaboration between the owners and the administrations is needed to promote the great rehabilitation and renovate and maintain the buildings of the historic centers".