The Barcelona City Council has filed five sanctioning files that were initiated in 2022 for breach of the standard that requires reserving 30% of the new promotions or large rehabilitations for protected housing, as The Diari ara has advanced And the Lieutenant of the Mayor’s Office, Laia Bonet, has confirmed it, in attention to journalists on Monday.
This file occurs because in September 2023, shortly after Jaume Collboni arrived at the Mayor’s Office of Barcelona, the new government asked legal services a report on the procedures that had been carried out until that time to apply sanctions for breach of the norm.
The result of this report that, for the moment, the Consistory has not facilitated, argues that there is “little legal certainty” in the way those files were initiated, still during Ada Colau. The doubts are based on the fact that the previous administration, given that various promoters had requested incorrect work licenses to try to skip the regulations, committed some defects.
Basically, doubts are based on the fact that the sanctioning file began at the same time than the restitution. The latter is the one that must be resolved whether the appropriate license has been requested or not and, as they maintain from the PSC, sanctions cannot be imposed without being completely clear that an infraction has been committed when communicating the works.
“To have all the guarantees, what you have to do is first solve the restitution file and then, once the breach emerges, we have all the tools with legal certainty to impose sanctions that will not be lying down,” explained the Bonet. The Lieutenant of the Mayor’s Office has loaded against Barcelona in Comú, who has shaved “work without reliability”, although the Government of Barcelona in Comú was in coalition with the PSC.
Thus, as the Administration has a period of six months to resolve a file from the moment it is initiated and, while the Legal Services report has taken more than a year to be ready, the processes that were open expired and, Therefore, they were automatically filed.
Despite this, Bonet has stressed that this does not mean that they have been left in a drawer. “They are all alive and with the possibility of ending in sanction,” the lieutenant reiterated. Thus, in case it ends up demonstrating that any of these five promoters requested a works license that did not correspond, the City Council assures that it will initiate a sanctioning file. “We have the firm will to go to the last consequences and to enforce the 30%standard,” he added.
For their part, the Communs have responded to Bonet and accused the Collboni government of “complicity with real estate lobby” and consider the decision to archive the files as a “scam.” They also consider that, if there have been no sanctions, it is for lack of political will and have defended their way of proceeding by remembering that, during their mandate, they could finish two files inconed, ensuring that “there is” legal certainty.
9 possible infractions detected
Today, the Barcelona City Council has nine cases of possible infractions detected. All of them come from a great inspection that was carried out in 2022, when 2,500 promotions were investigated. In total, 17 possible “very serious” infractions were detected, but half of them – eight – were finally considered that “technically” did not breach the norm.
Among the remaining nine are the five that have been filed and four others, which began the City Council after having the Legal Services report. In the case of the five filed, the Consistory has launched a restitution file.
All cases are waiting for a resolution, except one of them, which affects a farm on Castillejos Street. This already has a sentence confirmed that the promoter tried to skip the regulations asking for a license that did not correspond. The City Council is “studying the sentence” for incoming the respective sanctioning file.
The Consistory has not wanted to venture how long the resolution of the rest of the files will come, necessary to be able to impose sanctions. This is a no less detail because the City Council is working on a reform of the 30%reserve standard, which could leave out the great rehabilitations.
Although Laia Bonet has insisted that the reform “will not affect” the processing of possible sanctioning files, consulted legal sources say that if the fines are put after the reform, “it could be complicated that the sanctions could be held” .
Since he arrived at the Mayor’s Office, Collboni made clear his intention to reform this measure, which was approved by Colau in 2018. For this, the mayor has the commitment of the Junts group, thanks to an agreement that he arrived with Xavier Trias, when he was still the leader of municipal training.
The intention of the Consistory is to maintain the 30%reservation, but eliminate the obligation that the floors destined for protected housing are in the same promotion and, therefore, can be placed in other neighborhoods of the city. In the case of large rehabilitations, the intention is that it only be maintained for those cases in which only the facade or in which the habitable surface is increased by 600 square meters is preserved.
The reason for this reform is that, as they point out from the PSC, it has not worked. In fact, according to municipal data, for five years only 26 protected homes have been created thanks to this standard. In addition, he also maintains that he has reduced the construction of new homes and rehabilitations despite the fact that, according to data from the College of Architects, 1,000 new floors are built every year.
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