He Valencia Town Hall paralyzed the authorization of more than a thousand tourist apartments requested before the suspension of the authorizations approved by all political groups on the proposal of the mayor, María José Catalá.
As the City Council reported this Sunday in a press release, retroactivity was applied and this prevented the number of tourist apartments from continuing to grow. In addition, they indicated that licenses for the construction of hotels, paralyzed in some cases for a decade, have been unblocked.
In the city of Valencia, the proliferation of these apartments has intensified in recent years, recording from 2015 to 2023 more than 4,500.
In 2018, the previous government of Joan Riboapproved a change in urban planning to allow the opening of tourist apartments in commercial basements, which was prohibited, according to municipal sources.
On the other hand, they stressed that the inspection plan has started to close illegal apartments.
The judgment was approved in month of May and will be valid for one year. It concerns the homes of communities of owners and the ground floors and not the buildings dedicated exclusively to tourist apartments, which constitute an economic activity that the Town Hall equates to a hotel.
Also excluded from this measure are properties with a permit or responsible declaration authorizing tertiary use on the first floor, provided that they have independent access from the public highway.
Plenary session of the Valencia City Hall. EE
The moratorium is planned for the entire city. The municipality’s intention is to work during this period on more restrictive regulations for the transformation of residences into tourist apartments.
On the town planning side, “work is already underway on the regulations which will prevent the proliferation of tourist apartments and which will define the type of tourism desired by the city of Valencia”.
These sources consider that this is linked to the release of the city’s urban plans which will provide the city with officially protected housing and therefore lower the rental and purchase prices of housing.
Social rental
The spokesperson for Valencia City Hall, Juan Carlos Caballeroexplained that “this avalanche of new tourist apartments is due in part to the relaxation of regulations to be able to create tourist apartments in commercial basements for which it is precisely Compromís and the PSOE who have encouraged the situation in which find the city.
He underlined, in this sense, that in just one year of government, the Valencia City Hall has doubled the number of rental housing at an affordable price.
For the municipal spokesperson, “these are not forecasts, but these housing units are already inhabited, as is the case with the Safranar building which already has tenants with affordable rents or the Malilla housing development.”
Moreover, in record time, it was launched 1,000 housing units which will considerably increase the city’s supply. “A thousand housing units in one year when the commitment was to launch them in four years,” he recalled.
