Maragall promises to approve an ordinance to regulate tourist apartments in 100 days

Ernest Maragall has promised this morning that if he governs in Barcelona, ​​he will proceed to draft and approve an ordinance to regulate tourist apartments, within the first 100 days of his mandate.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
22 May 2023 Monday 11:01
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Maragall promises to approve an ordinance to regulate tourist apartments in 100 days

Ernest Maragall has promised this morning that if he governs in Barcelona, ​​he will proceed to draft and approve an ordinance to regulate tourist apartments, within the first 100 days of his mandate. The Republican mayor has outlined this proposal, but without concretions, in front of the building on Tarragona street, in which the city council must grant 120 tourist accommodation licenses (HUT, according to its acronym in Catalan) to a real estate agency, in accordance with a recent judicial sentence and before the complaints of the affected neighbors of this block.

It should be remembered that said real estate agency processed the conversion of the houses at number 84 Tarragona street into HUTs when the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia suppressed, due to a formal matter, the initial proposal of the Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodation (PEUAT), which Later, it was applied when a new version was presented. To this day, the city council does not grant licenses to open more HUTs.

Maragall, who has appeared accompanied by the mayoress of Sitges, Aurora Carbonell, has given as an example the path laid out in this town that already has an ordinance in this area. Among other measures established in the regulation, Sitges prohibits the sale of homes with a tourist use license to avoid price increases. Maragall has stated that he feels "healthy envy" of Carbonell and has deplored the situation experienced by the tenants of the building on Tarragona street. "It is the City Council that is evicting these families due to omission, inhibition and explicit mismanagement," he said. In his opinion, this situation responds to structural failures and he has warned that this is not the only case, that up to now he has compiled seven more sentences in which new licenses are endorsed for HUT in Muntaner street or in Santa Madrona square. , among other locations.

Maragall calculates that in the next term the tourist tax will report an income of 400 million euros to the City Council, which the Republicans propose to allocate to the areas most stressed by overcrowding, such as Ciutat Vella.

The candidates Jaume Collboni (PSC) and Xavier Trias (Junts) have once again been the target of criticism from the Republicans. To the second, Maragall has reproached him for the inconsistencies of his party. While "the Junts group in the Senate voted yesterday against the rental price containment law", Trias has spoken out today in favor of acting in "stressed" neighborhoods, he has criticized. "They want to make themselves clear! It seems to me that this is not acceptable. They send clear messages to the big economic operators, to the big investment funds, they make it clear that they are against the containment of rental prices, and Trias Look the other way".

For number two on the list, Elisenda Alamany, Trias and Collboni break the citizen balance, both propose an "open bar, they want the Benidorm model".