The war on the terraces is getting worse. Ciutat Vella restaurateurs accused of repeatedly breaching the regulations are hiding their terraces so that the City Council can take them away. They didn't even require the stoves. The vaudeville was unleashed about nine o'clock in the morning. Members of the municipal legal services, officers of the Guardia Urbana, a few workers and a couple of trucks stood in front of the well-known El Rincón del Artista and, in a very thorough way, they dismantled and labeled each of the elements of their guardian .
"With hammers and saws - says the lawyer of this place on Carrer Nou de la Rambla, Eudald Lligoña-. They even charged the wooden platform... The normal thing is that they give you a few days notice and give you the chance to defend yourself. I immediately alerted the others and many hid their terraces so that the City Council would not take them away. There are many jobs at stake. It is illegal persecution. Mayor Jaume Collboni's government is breaking the rules".
The case of El Rincón del Artista is one of the 33 files for removal of terraces for repeated non-compliance with the ordinance opened by the district of Ciutat Vella during the previous term and which in the end expired because they ran out of time, the same as the deputy mayor of Security and councilor responsible for this area of the city, Albert Batlle, assured that he would recover after much of the opposition denounced this display of administrative inefficiency.
After revising the criterion and establishing seven minimum violations to lose the license instead of five, the number of terraces identified by the district was 24. business, Lligoña. Despite this, the City Council gave the permits for last year. With BComú the limit was five sanctions, and with the PSC, seven. In addition, the Consistory is not applying the same criteria throughout the city. And all this is in court, and the judge has already said that, while the procedure lasts, the City Council cannot take away the tables".
The City Council only yesterday confirmed the removal of the terrace of El Rincón del Artista. And he did not clarify whether his entourage was found in other cases where restaurateurs had hidden their terrace. In any case, these days, as many as necessary, the entourage will return to the designated establishments until the guards are dismantled. "This year - municipal sources insist - the City Council opened new files, detected new breaches. The mechanism of not renewing the license is provided for in the terrace ordinance in cases where a sanctioning procedure has been initiated for repeated non-compliance or for serious or very serious misconduct”.
We are witnessing the latest episode of the crossfire between the Consistory, many entities and a large part of the restoration. Also yesterday, the Federation of Associations of Residents of Barcelona (Favb) denounced that with the new rate restaurateurs will pay less than before the pandemic, a privilege that the Favb sees as unjustifiable, considering the situation in other sectors.
The truth is that trenches are being built everywhere. Recently, about a hundred businesses in the Raval and the Gòtic celebrated that the City Council had no choice but to withdraw the restrictions imposed the previous term. The municipal legal services saw that, due to formal defects, they had lost the administrative dispute brought by the Restoration Guild.
