The residents of some of the streets of the Eixample are fed up with the fact that this area of ??the city has become the great watering hole of Barcelona, ??with all the problems that this entails. Reconciling rest and not feeling expelled from your own home is complicated when in streets like Enric Granados, Mallorca, Aribau and, more recently, Consell de Cent, noise and dirt cause serious inconvenience to residents, both when the The terraces of the bars are in full operation as after, until the wee hours of the morning, when these streets become a route for tourists and natives loaded with alcohol.
The new councilor of the district, Jordi Valls, has taken note of the problem and today, after meeting with representatives of various neighborhood entities, including the Association of Residents of the Esquerra de l’Eixample and the Platform SOS Enric Granados, he has committed to “redouble this summer the commitment to coexistence in the public space”.
The municipal government has announced that it has strengthened the device to enforce the regulations and guarantee neighborhood rest in areas with intensive use of public space, such as the new green axis of Consell de Cent, or the area around Enric Granados. This same weekend the change should begin to be noticed with the announced beginning of the reinforcement of the presence of the Urban Police in l’Esquerra de l’Eixample and the incorporation of a new night patrol during the months of July and August, from the hour from the closing of the terraces and until three in the morning.
The agents in charge of respecting coexistence in these streets will not have it easy. In recent times, new phenomena have appeared that have only made the situation worse. Practically every day one can observe, and above all hear, how huge groups of people –sometimes they can exceed a hundred– roam shouting, drunk in hand, in organized routes that take them from bar to bar.
As reported by the City Council, the work of the new patrol will be accompanied by measures to raise awareness against noise, an intensification of inspections to ensure compliance with the regulations of public places and a reinforcement of cleaning. Regarding this last point, every weekend, from Thursday to Sunday, some sections of Enric Granados will be washed when the terraces have closed, which have had restricted hours on this street for months (until 11 p.m. from Sunday to Thursday and until midnight on Friday, Saturday and the eve of public holidays).
Although it does not rule out resorting to a heavy hand, the City Council has begun to distribute a poster in Catalan, Spanish and English that recalls the prohibition of making large bottles and consuming alcohol on public roads, inexhaustible sources of noise and dirt. The distribution began in the most stressed areas of Enric Granados, Aribau, the Joan Miró park, the Sant Antoni superblock and Mistral avenue, which have been added in recent days by the Consell de Cent, Girona and the surroundings of the Sagrada Family.
