The new mayor of Barcelona , Ada Colau, supported by Podemos, announced today that temporarily suspend the licensing of hotels and tourist apartments , aiming to open a process of engagement with all sectors involved, to develop a new regulatory plan for the sector, which expects to have ready next year.
The city wants to assess the economic and social impact of the existing supply on access to housing and occupation of public space. The municipal government aims to ensure that tourism “does not represent any source of conflict with neighboring city” in order to “guarantee the quality of life of citizens and prevent disturbance of public order”.
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In addition, the government says it aims Colau distribute the benefits of tourism “fairly” among all districts of Barcelona and decongest areas under more pressure from tourism. We have to begin “a process of slow and orderly reflection” on the tourist model of the city, he said at a press conference Colau, who denied that the suspension may lose jobs.
The measure affects 30 hotels , including the iconic Torre Agbar, which was recently acquired by Emin Capital to turn it into a luxury hotel for the Hyatt chain and a future hotel Luxury provisions Tower Deutsche Bank, at the confluence of Paseo de Gracia and Diagonal.
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With this decision, the city council paralyzed the issue licensing of hotels, apart hotels, tourist shops, boarding, homes for tourist use, student residences and hostels.
Barcelona received last year 7.5 million foreign tourists , which makes it Europe’s third most visited city in Europe, after London and Paris. Tourism accounts for 14% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Barcelona, a city with 68,000 beds in 377 hotels, which covered some 9,600 tourist shops add up.
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Last year the residents of several neighborhoods of the city, especially in Barceloneta, protested several times against the proliferation of tourist shops and its impact on coexistence and identity of its streets . The Federation of Neighbourhood Associations of Barcelona recorded a 20,000 tourist shops operating in the city without license . This proliferation increases the price of housing and rental and contributes to “the expulsion of the indigenous population,” said Lluis Rabell, president of the federation of neighbors. He said that the reason for this growth was the simplification of administrative procedures and the removal of obligations as licenses, a “classic manual of neoliberal policies.” Rabell said that “Barcelona need hotels but you have to measure impacts not find in a few years rescuing hotels as we rescued the banks.” _mce_bogus=”1″
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