The latest traffic restrictions of the new loading and unloading system arranged by the City Council in the Gòtic a few weeks ago are unleashing the despair of many merchants. We are not talking about souvenir shops, t-shirts with rude messages and marijuana paraphernalia, but about pharmacies, lamp shops, stationery stores, pastry shops, food houses... the latest local businesses on this side of the city.
“We are losing customers and suppliers,” says Oriol Blasi, from the electrical appliance store on Calle Santa Anna Brescó i Blasi. We opened more than a hundred years ago, but at this rate we will have to leave the center. The new measures do not allow us to serve the plumbers first thing in the morning, to provide them with what they need for their works, and a few are already looking for other suppliers. And ours, our suppliers, tell us that the latest restrictions are fatal for them, that we find another location ”.
It is one of the last measures arranged by the executive of the mayoress Ada Colau. Until a few weeks ago, the City Council allowed loading and unloading in the Gòtic from eight to eleven in the morning and from three to five in the afternoon. Now, however, the service is concentrated between half past nine and half past twelve. In addition, from Monday to Saturday from seven to nine thirty and also from twelve thirty to nine at night, as well as on Sundays from six in the morning to ten at night, access by private vehicle is restricted.
"We do home cooking, a lot of chup chup, and that takes time," says Julio Marín, from La Rioja restaurant, in Duran i Bas, "and with these hours we don't have time to make various dishes as we would like. We have to find alternatives. A stop in Santa Caterina brings us the fish on foot. But these ways make everything more expensive. For the accounts to come out you have to have large suppliers that are not usually close. Our artichokes are all from El Prat. And the truth is that customers are not up for further price increases”.
Meanwhile, a very stressed carrier says that the new system works like a funnel, and that in the end all the carriers arrive at the stores at the same time, and that this way they all get an awful lot of stress, including those in charge of the stores... and that now he has to leave because time caught up with him and he left the van badly parked on the Rambla, that on top of that they are going to fine him and... Yes, bakeries and cafeterias without a workshop now have many difficulties serving breakfast early in the morning .
Barna Centre, the merchants' association, asks the government of Mayor Jaume Collboni to reconsider these measures, to consider recovering the afternoon slot for loading and unloading and to establish another from six-thirty to eight-thirty for the supply of product cool.
“The new system is making our service worse,” complains Arturo Lasmarías, from the Lasmarías pharmacy, the one in front of the Cathedral. We had four supplies a day, and thus we could sell any medicine in less than two hours. Do you know how many medications are on the formulary? But now I have to tell many clients to come back tomorrow or Monday! And send an employee to Via Laietana to get the trays, and the insulins are transported refrigerated! It's not that anything is going to happen... but this change wasn't necessary."
"It's that we are losing competitiveness," Rosa Olivé, from the hundred-year-old Miret stationery store, on Petritxol street, said. How are we going to compete with Amazon without the afternoon loading and unloading slot? We cannot improve our online offer in this way”. “All of this is absurd,” says Josep Maria Roig, from the historic La Colmena pastry shop. They are changing one of the few things that worked for us, are we going to have to bring the sacks of flour by bicycle?
