The Valencian government, then of the PP and Vox, celebrated on November 10, in its most literal sense, the repeal of the tourist tax approved by the previous government of the Botanical Pact through a law in the Corts Valencianes, but with a moratorium that suspended its implementation until the current year. In addition, its application depended on the will of each municipality.
In the case of Valencia, the old municipal team formed by Compromís and the PSPV was in favor of its implementation, as agreed in a motion approved in the plenary session of November 18 last year. But with the change of political color at the head of the city council after the arrival of the PP and Vox to the executive, with the mayor María José Catalá at its head, it was never carried out, especially after the repeal of the law in the Corts.
According to the repealed law, the amount of the tax varied between 0.5 euros per day for guesthouses, 1 euro for first-class apartments and one-, two- and three-star hotels and 1.5 euros for superior apartments and four- and five-star hotels.
The spokesperson for Compromís in the Corts Valencianes, Joan Baldoví, spoke this Wednesday about the need to apply a tourist tax in the Valencian Community, as is usually done in Europe, which usually amounts to around two euros per night.
Thus, with the data on overnight stays that the city has registered from January to June of this year, which according to the Visit Valencia Foundation, represent an increase of 14.7%, the city could close the year with 6.2 million overnight stays. , so the City Council could raise between 3.2 and 9.3 million euros. If the rate were 2 euros, it would reach 12.4 million euros.
In the case of the Valencian Community, according to Baldoví, during the 12 months of this year there will have been around 54 million overnight stays throughout the territory: “With 2 euros of tourist tax, there would be 109 million euros that could be distributed in the villages and would be used to pay 5,000 housing allowances that the Mazón government has stopped subsidising in profit because it has not made a budget forecast; or it would mean 2,000 more doctors; or 2,500 more teachers and professors.
The Valencians’ spokesman added that “Carlos Mazón’s tourism model leads us to overcrowding and problems in tourist areas related to health centres, pressure on the water supply or increased pressure on housing prices” and asked who should pay for “all this extra cost” that tourists generate: “According to Mazón, the Valencians” he explained.
“Our model is reasonable: the bill for these expenses is paid by the tourists themselves through a tourist tax. When we go on holiday, we pay the tourist tax and here we should also charge this tax to alleviate the obvious expenses generated by tourist overcrowding,” said the Compromís mediator.
