Barcelona
suspende todas as novas licenças de alojamentos turísticos
A
medida ocorre após a nova autarca ter considerado que o turismo na
cidade atingira o “ponto de saturação” e antecede a criação
de um Plano Especial de Regulação do setor
Alexandre Costa /
EXPRESSO online / 02.07.2015
A autarquia de
Barcelona decidiu suspender por um ano a concessão de licenças para
todo o tipo de alojamentos turísticos na cidade, o que se aplica a
hotéis, aparthotéis, pensões, hostels, vivendas de uso turístico,
residências de estudantes e albergues juvenis, segundo refere a
agência EFE.
A medida surge após
a nova autarca Ada Colau ter considerado que a exploração turística
atingira um “ponto de saturação” em Barcelona e antecede a
criação de um Plano de Regulação do Setor.
Colau considera ser
necessário limitar o número de turistas, de modo a evitar que a
cidade se torne numa nova “Veneza”, e que é preciso encontrar um
ponto de equilíbrio entre os interesses do setor e os dos
residentes.
Barcelona tem cerca
de 1,6 milhões de habitantes. Em 2013 recebeu 7,57 milhões de
turistas, 6 milhões dos quais estrangeiros.
A nova autarca, que
assumiu funções a 15 de junho, foi uma das fundadoras da Plataforma
dos Afetados pelas Hipotecas, que procurou fazer frente às ações
de despejo despoletadas pelas dividas à banca.
Barcelona
suspends new tourist accommodation licenses in bid to control influx
of visitors
By CIARAN GILES
Associated Press JULY 2, 2015 — 8:10AM /
http://www.startribune.com/barcelona-mayor-halts-new-tourist-accommodation-licenses/311435961/
MADRID —
Barcelona's new leftist mayor Thursday temporarily halted the issuing
of new licenses for tourist accommodation while new regulations are
drawn up to govern a sector some say has grown too big in recent
years.
A town hall
statement said the suspension would apply to hotels, apartments,
hostels and privately owned accommodation houses. It will affect some
30 current applications, including one to turn the city's
geyser-shaped Agbar skyscraper tower into a hotel.
"It was
necessary to put things in order," Mayor Ada Colau told
reporters. "Up to now, tourism policies had been drawn up
piecemeal."
Colau took office
last month promising social changes, including a plan to deal with
the problem of mass tourism.
Barcelona is one of
Europe's top vacation destinations, receiving more than 7 million
visitors annually. But many of its 1.6 million residents complain the
city is being overrun and losing its character.
Located on the
Mediterranean coast just south of the French border, Barcelona is the
capital of Spain's powerful Catalonia region and recognized worldwide
as a business, cultural and political center.
The town hall said
it plans to study existing accommodation capacity and its economic
and social impact, and will start a public debate on developing a
sustainable tourism plan by early 2016. It said it aimed to reduce
the pressure of tourism in certain areas and spread it more equitably
among the city's 73 neighborhoods.
Officials said they
would take into account the experience of other major tourist cities,
adding that the plan aimed to preserve Barcelona as a quality tourism
destination without disturbing residents.
'Not
a theme park'
By early 2016, after
studying the economic impact of Barcelona's existing accommodation
capacity, the town hall plans to initiate public debate on how to
distribute tourists throughout the city and break up holidaymaker
ghettos like the seaside Barceloneta neighborhood, which symbolizes
vacation excesses.
Last summer, as
social media circulated pictures of a trio of well-muscled Italians
prancing around the Barceloneta neighborhood in the buff, Colau
accused tourists of failing to realize "they were in a city, not
a theme park" in an opinion piece that ran in "The
Guardian" and other international press. Residents took to the
streets to complain about a general increase in nudity, public
drunkenness and noise, and even asked the owners of accommodation
rentals to think of their longtime neighbors and shut down their
businesses.
"Any city that
sacrifices itself on the altar of mass tourism will be abandoned by
its people when they can no longer afford the cost of housing, food
and basic everyday needs," Colau, a Barcelona native, wrote. "If
they manage to stay, they have to put up with noise and pollution
that are difficult to combine with daily life," she added. "It's
paradoxical, but uncontrolled mass tourism ends up destroying the
very things that made a city attractive to visitors in the first
place: the unique atmosphere of the local culture."
mkg/msh (Reuters,
AP)
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