The mayor of València, María José Catalá, of the PP, defends putting a limit on tourist apartments in Ciutat Vella, at the same time she defends the need to expand the Valencia airport to receive more visitors and avoids supporting the imposition of a tourist tax, in total coincidence with the hotel sector in these last two cases. This is what the mayor said this Monday morning in the interview she gave to Cadena SER as part of the meetings organized by Radio Valencia and on the occasion of the year of her victory in Valencia. Català has announced that her government, formed by the PP and Vox, will take to the Urban Planning Commission this week the modification of the Ciutat Vella Special Plan for 2020 so that “no more tourist apartments are built” in this district.
Catalá has specified that this modification will not affect the Sant Francesc area, where entire buildings of tourist apartments can be built, nor the Plaza del Patriarca. The mayor has justified this measure by the fact that Ciutat Vella is currently one of the neighborhoods in the city with the highest number of tourist apartments, 10% in relation to habitual residences, a percentage that she has already considered “adequate.” . With the general moratorium on licenses already approved for the opening of tourist homes in the city, he has defended the need to “order well, make the rules of the game clear and that there is legal security for everyone”, in contrast to the previous government’s stage of the left (Compromís and PSPV-PSOE), “without ordinances or inspections,” as he has reiterated.
Català, in any case, has stressed that tourism is a priority economic activity for the city, although “the rules must be set well.” In this sense, he has advocated the expansion of Valencia airport, because it has become too small, on the verge of exceeding its capacity of 10.5 million passengers per year. 49% of the passengers are foreign tourists. And without the expansion, 1,000 million euros and 14,000 jobs would not be generated, according to a study by the Valencia Chamber of Commerce, which the mayor has championed. She has insisted that she is in favor of the tourism sector and has warned of the “populist wave of tourismphobia.”
Asked by the director of the SER in the Valencian Community, Bernardo Guzmán, if with the problems of touristification it would not be advisable to resume the tourist tax that the PP and Vox Government of the Generalitat eliminated shortly after coming to power, Catalá has responded: “This is not the time.” “It is time to regulate well, prosecute illegal activity and order,” he added. In any case, the debate would have to be implemented “in a coordinated manner and in dialogue with the sector,” he noted.
Regarding the criticism of the second deputy mayor and spokesperson for Vox in the city council of this city, Juanma Badenas, to the Ombudsman that she “would never have called the representative of this institution, Ángel Luna, a legal dwarf.” And she has placed Badenas’ words towards the defender of the Valencian people within the framework of her personal opinion. However, he has pointed out that “last night” he heard “that a Spanish minister called a journalist a sack of shit on Twitter”, in reference to the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, and to a hoax spread by Vito Quiles, about the alleged socialist cargo car, when it is a police car.
Regarding the discrepancies with the LGTBI+ groups that, like the historic Lambda association, have distanced themselves from the City Council, which they accuse of appropriating Gay Pride Day, on June 28, Catalá has played down the matter. He has rejected that only “left-wing governments can celebrate pride”, although he has thanked left-wing parties for their fight to achieve social advances in terms of equality, feminism or ecology. “These are achievements that already belong to everyone and the left cannot patrimonize them,” he added.
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Social housing
Shortly after the interview, Catalá presented this Monday the Plan + Housing, which thanks to the activation of municipal plots, the surface right and the exchange of land for housing, among other initiatives, will involve the construction of 954 social housing public.
Catalá has visited the works for the construction of 75 homes for affordable rental on Avenida de los Naranjos, where he has taken stock of the first year at the head of the Mayor’s Office and has announced the main lines of this housing plan, an area, as he has highlighted, that is a priority for the council.
The first pillar of the Plan+Housing is based on public-private collaboration and, as announced by the mayor, this week the Official Gazette of the Province “will publish the announcement for the exchange of four municipal lots for the construction of public housing, for between 75 and 100 homes that are already under construction to be awarded under an affordable rental regime.”
With the exchange of these four plots, which are located in Malilla and which represent 2,813 square meters of land and 42,199 square meters of roof, 400 new privately promoted publicly protected homes can be built that will be used for purchase.
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