Barcelona licence freeze

In the middle of a summer tourist season heatwave, the new leftist government of Barcelona has made one of its more imperative electoral commitments a reality. For a period of one year, although with the possibility of it being extended to a second, the City Council will not award any new licences for hotels, serviced apartments, guest houses, student residences, youth hostels, or tourist apartments and homes in any area of the Catalan capital. The measure is seen by the Council as a starting point for the approval in early 2016 of a regulatory framework to structure a vital sector in the economic fabric of the city - representing 14% of its GDP - but one which in recent years has undergone uncontrolled growth that has led to neighbourhood conflicts in the areas most affected by tourism, such as the well-publicised case of Barceloneta.

News of the moratorium was published yesterday and in a press conference mid-morning new mayor Ada Colau stressed that the measure is purely temporary, its aim being therefore “not to stop tourism”. The new measure affects about thirty projects that had already applied for licences, none of which will be able to open in the short term.

Report on tourism

The basic purpose of the moratorium is simply to prevent requests for opening new establishments from skyrocketing, with a cooling off period providing the breathing space to reach an agreement on a new regulatory framework regarding tourist accommodation. To this end, Colau explained that a municipal committee will be created and tasked with presenting a report on tourism in the city, as there are some practices, such as illegally renting out apartments or rooms to foreign visitors, on which the Council does not have any estimates regarding their scale.

“We want to bring order to tourism, as until now policies have resembled a patchwork consisting in putting out fires whenever they were generated” said the mayor.