The government of Mayor Jaume Collboni now denies that at the last municipal Planning Commission it agreed with the councilors of Junts to reform the special urban planning plan for tourist accommodation (Peuat) with the aim of authorizing the opening of unique hotels in the center of Barcelona. The deputy mayor of Urbanism, Laia Bonet, wrote a tweet yesterday afternoon in which she assured that, if the Peaut is revised, "it will be to adapt it to the new Catalan and Spanish regulations, and always maintaining the restrictions current".
The truth is that, after the session on Tuesday afternoon, the tweet that the deputy mayor of Urbanism made yesterday seems like a completely unexpected surprise. Those of Xavier Trias are still overwhelmed. The agreements of these commissions are not binding, but they usually clearly illustrate the intentions of the different municipal groups. Perhaps the great public uproar that was created after the vote has pushed the socialist executive to make these last nuances.
Junts' proposal was clear: to reform Peuat with the aim of opening unique hotel establishments in zones one and two. However, the requirements to achieve this category were still pending development in the proposal. In addition, those from Trias also proposed to lift the veto on renting rooms in the same house and take on the regulation proposed by the Generalitat in 2020.
The text established to process these changes in an official way in three months, but this term was eliminated after the final text was negotiated with the socialists. The transactions would be small arrangements to facilitate agreements between the different groups. Then, in the corresponding vote, the socialists abstained, but it was precisely this abstention that allowed Junts' proposal to go ahead. If PSC councilors had voted against it, the proposal would have been rejected.
"We have always understood that the change requested by the government was to make it possible to vote in favor - they pointed out yesterday from Junts shortly after reading the deputy mayor's tweet -. Already towards the end and shortly before the debate on the proposal began, the government communicated that it was abstaining, so that it relativized the change and remarked that it was still allowed for the proposal to be approved”.
In addition, Junts added in a statement, "in any case, we remind Bonet that Mayor Collboni, just fifteen days after being invested, in an interview with the Efe agency, was willing, literally, to make an exception to the planning in the case of some hotel in favor of quality".
