The Seville City Council (PP) will cut off the water supply to some 5,000 irregular tourist apartments that operate in the Andalusian capital without a permit or that do not comply with the regulations, according to the municipal estimate. The City Council wants to stop the proliferation of holiday apartments outside the law and is considering closing this estimated number of 5,000 homes, after cross-checking the data with rental technology platforms. However, the opposition criticizes that the measure is a fireworks display because the City Council refused two months ago to suspend the new permits for tourist use housing (VUT) in Seville and The touristification experienced by downtown residents will continue to increase. The rate planned by the City Hall to examine these 5,000 irregular dwellings is 10 per week, so if the number of inspectors does not increase, the task will take forever and will be completed within a decade.
“These 5,000 irregular homes include those registered in the municipal registry and that do not comply with the obligation to be on the ground floor or first floor, or certain design conditions, and those that are not registered, but operate on the market. We cross-reference the data with the platforms and the analysis will determine the tourist stress of each neighborhood,” indicate sources from the Sevillian Urban Planning Directorate, which has signed an agreement of 10 measures with the Agency. The first block of apartments that will see their water supply at risk are the 715 apartments that, according to the land registry and the registry, exceed the height of a first floor, and therefore do not comply with urban planning regulations, as advanced by this summer eldiario.es.
Andalusia is the region with the most tourist rentals in Europe, with 117,000 homes and 620,000 beds. Complaints from neighbors about the problems caused by mass tourism have skyrocketed this year with a record number of visitors and politicians are now trying to take note. Currently, in this decalogue of measures with the Council to limit legal tourist apartments, the water and electricity cutoff stands out, although since the electricity contract is liberalized and depends on many companies, it is a much more complex task.
The mayor of Seville, José Luis Sanz, welcomed his plan this Monday: “We will act with zero tolerance in tourist apartments that operate irregularly. “More control and firmer sanctions to put an end to illegal apartments in Seville, after years of misappropriation.” The City Council assures that one of its priorities is to tackle the problems that the apartments pose to residents of the center and the Triana neighborhood, the two centers of touristification, which have exploded in recent years and which generate serious problems of coexistence.
The platform that fights against mass tourism in the city centre, the Citizen Initiative of Seville, considers the actions of the City Council to be a smokescreen. “With 10 permits per week, how many years will it take to eradicate illegal housing? The main problem is no longer about illegal or legal apartments, but the entire city and the political opposition are demanding a moratorium to not issue a single permit. And until they take this measure, everything else is just a cover-up to entertain and deceive public opinion. Holidays are granted every week, the opposite of what this government team promised,” criticises its spokesperson, David López.
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Before putting forward this plan to put an end to illegal housing, the mayor, who governs in a minority, He tried to advance his proposal in June to limit residential housing, but the opposition overwhelmingly rejected it. The PSOE, Vox and Con Podemos-IU voted against, considering that the rule was insufficient, that it did not include the allegations of the neighborhood associations and that the PP was opposed to imposing a moratorium. The intention of the City Council was to limit these homes to 10% of the total available homes, which slowed them down in the historic center and Triana, both saturated, but allowed them to continue increasing in the rest of the city.
“The mayor is only trying, with this announcement, to prevent people from taking to the streets as happened in Malaga, but in the meantime he is not prohibiting new permits. The measure is a facelift and an investigation into the inability to approve his proposal for tourist apartments. We ask Sanz for a serious debate on a problem that is forcing residents out of the centre, causing huge inflation and that all the eggs are put into tourism as the only productive model for the city,” laments councillor Ismael Sánchez, spokesman and councillor for Sanz. With Podemos-IU.
Last January The Council approved a decree to regulate the region's 117,000 homes, and gave city councils the power to limit or ban tourist apartments. In the capital, there are 9,384 such dwellings.
The local PSOE doubts the legality of being able to cut off the water supply to a tourist apartment with a legal contract in force and its bills paid up to date. “You can't cut off the water like that,” says councilor Francisco Páez. “The planned limitation of 10% is not such, because if the number of homes in Seville is around 330,000, that would mean increasing the current number from 9,700 to 33,000. That is 23,000 more. Better to limit them to 2.5%, because as the mayor said, there is no room for one more tourist apartment in Seville,” he adds. Before Sanz's arrival, during his eight years in office, the PSOE had favored the inevitable growth of tourism in the Andalusian capital, rolling out the red carpet for it, according to neighborhood groups.
The City Council maintains that the drastic measure of cutting off the water to illegal apartments is approved by the municipal legal services and the Authority, and hopes for a deterrent effect so that the 5,000 homes are quickly reduced once the technicians' inspections begin. Regarding the socialist proposal to reduce the percentage of licenses to 2.5% to stop them in their tracks, the Urban Planning Department believes that this percentage “would prohibit” the opening of new apartments, protected by the freedom of the market and the European regulatory framework. “We must start at 10% for the areas most saturated with tourist stress. And regarding the fact that there is no more room for more apartments in Seville, one question is the will of the mayor and another is the legal procedure. Not one more tourist residence, but in compliance with the law,” the sources from the management specify.
The sector supports the review of irregular floors, but asks that it also be extended to hotels that do not comply with the law. Carlos Pérez-Lanzac, president of the Association of Professionals of Tourist Residences and Apartments of Andalusia (AVVA), asks that the City Council extend the measure “to hotels marketed as tourist residences and others with categories higher than those they have in the Andalusian register, we ask to clarify the gray areas. “In addition, we demand a municipal register to identify and limit the clandestine offer. We are currently in talks with the City Council,” he says.