Elite Taxi already plans to block the El Prat airport this Monday. “And it will only be the beginning,” warns Alberto Álvarez, alias Tito, founder of the main taxi drivers association in the metropolitan area. This year yes, this year we will not back down. This year we are going to boycott Mobile, and it will only be the beginning. It will be a very hot spring!” As has become traditional, the sector sharpens its knives and raises its demands on the eve of the most important commercial congress in Barcelona. On this occasion, furthermore, the planets, the elements and the stars aligned.
Because a sudden rain of new car rental licenses with drivers is on the horizon. Everything indicates that very soon up to 1,337 new permits of this type, also known as VTC, will come into operation in the metropolitan area, which are used by cars that work with the Cabify, Uber and Bolt applications. We are talking about a revolution, a new scenario unheard of in these latitudes and more common in many other large cities. At the moment, in Barcelona, the three major mobility applications have around a thousand licenses, and those known as the traditional ones in the sector, those whose cars measure at least 4.90 meters in length and have been used for a lifetime transporting executives or attending a funeral, less than 700.
The truth is that you could see it coming. A few weeks ago the Supreme Court revoked the denial that the Community of Madrid made in 2018 to thousands of applications for VTC licenses based on the limitation of one VTC license for every 30 taxis, while a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union had eliminated this criterion. In this way, the court partially upheld an appeal from a Cabify subsidiary.
Technicians from the Generalitat informed representatives of Élite Taxi this Monday that they expect similar judicial resolutions shortly, that they are looking for some legal device to stop them, that at least the number of permits to be recovered here will not be as high as in Madrid, which only we are talking about 1,337...
“There will be 1,337 cars that will be able to compete unfairly with us and work as if they were taxis for four years,” Tito snaps, extremely furious. Apparently a thousand of these licenses are from Cabify. And since they are requests prior to the Ábalos decree, these cars will not even have to measure 4.90 meters. They can do whatever they want. This will not stay as it is".
In addition, the Generalitat technicians also explained this Monday to the representatives of the taxi drivers that the rate of expiration of those thousand or so VTC licenses that had been misplaced in a virtual drawer of the administration is being much slower than expected. Taxi drivers believed that at this point there would only be 316 left in operation, and it turns out that in truth there are still 712, and that the last one will not cease until the end of 2025. Hence the strong messages that Tito himself posted on social networks. Many technicians and politicians telephoned him in order to calm his spirits. But it was in vain. In any case, at least officially, the Department of Territory of the Generalitat preferred to remain silent and not give explanations on the matter.
Tito also says that this week he plans to meet with the different political groups in the Parliament, and that depending on their responses, his protests will more or less intensify. Elite Taxi will basically demand the creation of a credential that tightens the legal conditions to be able to work as a driver. Because what is happening right now is a judicial tsunami that is very difficult to stop. So taxi drivers are proposing measures aimed at making it much more difficult for large applications to find work. So taxi drivers propose that everyone has to have a B2 level of Catalan. If the measure goes ahead, Tito himself will have to remove it. “Yes, I will put my elbows in.”
