The graffiti artists owe Barcelona City Council around 200,000 euros. This is the amount of unpaid fines for dirtying street furniture and the facades of buildings in the city during the last four years. The municipal group of the PP demands that the City Council toughen the sanctions imposed under the civility ordinance and that those reported who do not face them be forced to repair the damage, to clean their own graffiti.
According to data provided by the City Council itself and gathered by the popular ones, between the years 2020 and 2023, the Urban Guard agents processed up to 2,070 fines for this concept and of all of them up to 1,352 remained unpaid. We are talking about a default rate of around 85%. The City Council only collected 34,011.38 euros out of an amount of 225,200. So the debt accumulated during this period is 191,188.62 euros. Furthermore, the latest data in this regard, detailed this week by La Vanguardia, do not yet point to a clear change in trend. During the first four months of 2024, the City Council filed up to 109 sanctions for these concepts. So far, graffiti artists have only voluntarily paid 37.
“The inability of Mayor Jaume Collboni to enforce the civility ordinance is causing dirty walls and street furniture to be left free on the streets of Barcelona,” says popular councilor Daniel Sirera. So we have to tighten the civility ordinance so that those who violate it know that not only will they have to pay a significant penalty, but they will also have to bear the cost of cleaning it up or personally cleaning it up. Barcelona must once again be a city of law and order.”
One of the objectives of Mayor Collboni’s government for the current mandate is the reform of the civility ordinance, which dates back to 2006 and has long seemed somewhat outdated. The idea is to update it and focus it on the problems of public space that really alter the daily lives of citizens. The Urban Police and the City Council’s cleaning services have the graffiti underlined in red. Stopping the proliferation of daggers that the city suffers from is one of the objectives of the Endreça plan. The City Council dedicates about 500 hours of work and around 22,000 euros every day to removing posters, stickers and adhesives in public spaces. And the socialist executive also intends to accompany the new civility ordinance with payment mechanisms that improve its effectiveness. A fine that is not collected becomes a waste of paper. Throughout life, the main obstacle to this regulation was the non-payment of a good part of its sanctions.
The data collected by the Popular Party illustrates these circumstances. The debts of graffiti artists have only increased in recent years. In 2020 they left 20,435.67 euros outstanding, in 2021 45,493.73, in 2022 50,200.91 and in 2023 75,058.31. Other relevant numbers. During this period, the City Council opened up to 464 files for citizens of foreign nationality for these concepts. Only 54 paid the fine. The urban legend that uncivil tourists do whatever they want and then happily return to their countries also has a small statistical basis.
