The Daily Populous Saturday June 22nd, 2024 night edition
Authored by theolivepress.es and submitted by BezugssystemCH1903

BARCELONA’S city council has announced it will revoke all licenses for tourist apartments in the urban area by 2028.

In a major win for anti-tourist activists, Barcelona’s socialist mayor Jaume Collboni announced on Friday that licenses for 10,101 tourist apartments in the city will automatically end in November 2028.

The move represents a crushing blow for Airbnb, Booking.com and other tenants and a triumph for locals who have protested about over-tourism and rising house prices for years.

Announcing the move, Collboni said the rising cost of property in the city – rental and purchase prices have risen by 70% and 40% respectively in the last decade – had forced him to take drastic action.

He said: “We cannot allow it that most young people who leave home are forced to leave Barcelona. The measures we have taken will not change the situation in one day. These things take time. But with these measures we are reaching a turning point”.

READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: ‘Tourism has gone too far’ – hundreds of protestors target F1 roadshow in Barcelona city centre ahead of Spanish Grand Prix

The move represents a big win for anti-tourist protestors, who attempted to disrupt an F1 roadshow in the city on Tuesday. Copyright: Ben Pawlowski/Olive Press

The deputy mayor for Urban Planning, Laia Bonet, hailed the move as the ‘equivalent of building 10,000 new flats’ which can be used by locals for residential use.

Local officials say that tenants will not be compensated because the move, which will have to be passed with political support, has de-facto compensation by giving owners a four-year window before licences expire.

Alongside the revoking of tourist flat licenses, Collboni announced that new legislation would force building constructors to allocate at least 30% of new homes to social housing.

The measures are designed to alleviate pressure on a housing market which has seen sharp price rises in recent years, forcing many residents to leave the urban area for the suburbs and beyond.

Speaking to the Olive Press at an anti-tourist rally on Tuesday, one Barcelona resident, who gave his name as Alex, said locals were angry at the ‘massification of tourism’ with ‘the cost of living and housing forcing many young people to emigrate from the city centre to the suburbs and nearby towns’.

He added: “The people of Barcelona, like any city in the UK and elsewhere, have the right to live peacefully in their own city. What we need is a better quality of life, decent wages and, above all, an affordable city to live in”.

Deltahotel_ on June 21st, 2024 at 15:59 UTC »

You know, it may be super nice to visit a city and stay in a regular neighborhood and not be in a hotel, but people deserve to have their cities and they shouldn’t be ran out of town by high prices driven up by artificial scarcity just because big companies and landlords are hogging all the property

euclide2975 on June 21st, 2024 at 13:50 UTC »

I hope Paris will do the same. Airbnb is a cancer and is preventing people to live in big cities.

BezugssystemCH1903 on June 21st, 2024 at 13:44 UTC »

> BARCELONA’S city council has announced it will revoke all licenses for tourist apartments in the urban area by 2028.

> In a major win for anti-tourist activists, Barcelona’s socialist mayor Jaume Collboni announced on Friday that licenses for 10,101 tourist apartments in the city will automatically end in November 2028.

> The move represents a crushing blow for Airbnb, Booking.com and other tenants and a triumph for locals who have protested about over-tourism and rising house prices for years.

> Announcing the move, Collboni said the rising cost of property in the city – rental and purchase prices have risen by 70% and 40% respectively in the last decade – had forced him to take drastic action.

> He said: “We cannot allow it that most young people who leave home are forced to leave Barcelona. The measures we have taken will not change the situation in one day. These things take time. But with these measures we are reaching a turning point”.

> The deputy mayor for Urban Planning, Laia Bonet, hailed the move as the ‘equivalent of building 10,000 new flats’ which can be used by locals for residential use.

> Local officials say that tenants will not be compensated because the move, which will have to be passed with political support, has de-facto compensation by giving owners a four-year window before licences expire.

> Alongside the revoking of tourist flat licenses, Collboni announced that new legislation would force building constructors to allocate at least 30% of new homes to social housing.

> The measures are designed to alleviate pressure on a housing market which has seen sharp price rises in recent years, forcing many residents to leave the urban area for the suburbs and beyond.

> Speaking to the Olive Press at an anti-tourist rally on Tuesday, one Barcelona resident, who gave his name as Alex, said locals were angry at the ‘massification of tourism’ with ‘the cost of living and housing forcing many young people to emigrate from the city centre to the suburbs and nearby towns’.

> He added: “The people of Barcelona, like any city in the UK and elsewhere, have the right to live peacefully in their own city. What we need is a better quality of life, decent wages and, above all, an affordable city to live in”.