The taxi sector will mobilize next Tuesday, September 5 through the streets of Barcelona to show their displeasure at the penalty of more than 123,000 euros that the Catalan Competition Authority (Acco) imposed on the Élite Taxi association for boycotting Uber.
The protest will consist of a slow march to which all taxi drivers in the metropolitan area are summoned. They will depart from Avenida Maria Cristina and cross Barcelona along the Gran Via to the Parliament, with a special stop at number 60 Via Laietana, where the Acco has its headquarters.
Said action is the sector's way of showing its anger but without altering the daily life of the people of Barcelona too much, as they had come to propose at the beginning of August. At that time they were announcing an operation that they baptized as a “padlock” and that would make mobility impossible during the week that the city resumes its pulse and the schools reopen their doors.
To avoid enmities with the people and reach out to the administration, the taxi drivers have decided to reduce the pressure after being received first by the deputy mayor Laia Bonet and then by the new regional councilor for Territories, Ester Capella, along with the secretary for Mobility , Marc Sanglas, and the Director of Transport, Oriol Martori. "The meeting has gone very well, the minister has listened to us, has been understanding, so we relaxed the mobilizations and we are going to work together," the leader of Elite Taxi, Tito Álvarez, celebrated this Wednesday after seeing their faces for the first time with the new holder of the portfolio responsible for the taxi sector.
The members of the union who participated in the meeting assure that the Generalitat was willing to work with them to elaborate a law for the modernization of the sector in which the bad practices of some drivers are hardened. One of the issues that worries Álvarez the most is the charging of exorbitant fixed prices to tourists instead of using the taximeter, which has led members of the sector itself to establish controls in tourist areas and empty a fire extinguisher inside a taxi. .
