A recent ruling by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) halts the expropriation of the Buenos Aires house approved by the Barcelona City Council. At least for now. This is a controversial urban operation arranged in the previous mandate by the government of Mayor Ada Colau to set up a facility and endowment housing here.
The owners of this property planned to build a luxury hotel. The socialist executive of the mayor Jaume Collboni is currently studying whether or not to appeal the ruling. The commons are already urging their former partners. They understand that in truth the decision is mainly of a political nature, that legally speaking everything is very clear.
The truth is that the decision of the TSJC is based more on a few administrative errors, and not so much on really serious infractions. The processing in the previous mandate of the corresponding modification of the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM) was not exemplary. What happens is that the socialists never showed unbridled enthusiasm for this project.
This story started in 2019. Then the Buenos Aires house had been closed for seven years. The Pares Paüls congregation and the London Private Company investment fund signed the pre-sale of this modernist-style building. Vallvidrera is one of the neighborhoods where the Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodation (Peuat) allows the opening of new hotels.
Then residents of the surrounding area and other neighborhoods in the mountains occupied the Buenos Aires house and turned it into a kind of facility, with talks, yoga classes, bingo for the elderly, film projections… And in the background, a claim supported by many entities: in Vallvidrera there is a lack of public services, young people have to leave because they can’t find a flat, “the last thing we need here is a luxury tourist complex”.
The Colau executive supported this usurpation, and in his wake announced that he would catalog the place, that he would protect it in order to prevent its collapse, and also that he would expropriate it to set up a neighborhood facility and 37 public housing here. The Mossos d’Esquadra evicted the Buenos Aires house in October 2020. The City Council approved the expropriation a few days later, with the votes of BComú, its then socialist partners and also ERC.
Weeks before, however, the then councilor responsible for the Sarrià-Sant Gervasí district, the socialist Albert Batlle, stressed that “this project is not a priority for this council. Absolutely. And I have also said it within the municipal government”. Then this story faded into the background, until now.
The decision of the contentious administrative chamber of the TSJC represents a setback against this process. The court agrees to a large extent with the religious congregation and the investment fund and annuls the modification of the PGM for the cataloging of the Buenos Aires house, its expropriation and its conversion into a facility. The room understands that the project does not present the obligatory gender impact report, and also that the creation of endowment housing does not sufficiently justify the corresponding expropriation.
The new deputy mayor for Urbanism, the socialist Laia Bonet, succinctly points out that “the legal services of the City Council are analyzing the sentence. We will make the decision to appeal based on their conclusions. It’s still early.”
Janet Sanz, the former deputy mayor for Urban Planning and now spokesperson for the municipal group for the commons, has it much clearer. “The truth is that the sentence has little legal basis. It is not based on urban crimes, but on supposed rectifiable errors. Other expropriations have been carried out in the same way. The municipal government must appeal this sentence yes or yes, so that the process can continue. We wouldn’t understand if he didn’t. We are talking about attending to some very important needs in the Vallvidrera neighbourhood”.
