The judicial war around the terraces of Barcelona intensifies. Now at least a couple of rulings question the removal of terraces arranged during the pandemic in the Ciutat Vella district dictated by the municipal government then led by Ada Colau.
The contentious administrative courts number 9 and 15 of Barcelona agree with two restaurateurs from the neighborhoods of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera and Barceloneta and overthrow the withdrawal filed by the City Council of the terraces arranged there to alleviate the economic consequences of covid. The sentence of the 9th is not yet final, but that of the 15th is. Furthermore, both rulings open the doors for many other restaurateurs to make similar claims, in the Ciutat Vella district and in the rest of Barcelona.
In the first case, the judge considers that the municipal procedure left the restaurateur in a defenseless situation, that the City Council should have provided concrete and specific reasons, and not refer in such a generic way to the protection of the public interest. In the second case, the judge emphasizes the errors of the municipal administrative process, but she also objects to the ambiguous criteria used by the City Council.
These restaurateurs denounced that the City Council was systematically rejecting all requests made on this side of the city, that in a generic way it simply stated that these terraces were no longer suitable for coexistence, and that this contravenes the municipal ordinance established to regularize the candle stands. installed on roadways during the pandemic. And the local administration, for its part, responded that it is empowered to act in a discretionary manner, to do what it sees fit, in order to protect citizen coexistence in public spaces.
According to municipal data, the City Council granted 3,668 extraordinary terraces during the pandemic. The restaurateurs requested the consolidation of 2,899. 1,131 achieved it, 574 on the road and 557 on the sidewalk. Of the total, 474 are new and 657 are extensions. Together they add up to 5,528 tables and 21,536 chairs. Up to 1,435 requests were denied.
“Discretion is one thing and arbitrariness is another,” explains Eudald Lligoña, the lawyer for these two restaurateurs. Those administered have the right to know the reasons for the administration. Barcelona City Council acted in a similar way in dozens of cases. With these rulings, hundreds of restaurateurs now have the opportunity to recover their candlesticks. The City Council acted in these ways especially in the Ciutat Vella district, but also in the rest of Barcelona.”
The Gremi de Restauració de Barcelona denounced on numerous occasions that the City Council was rejecting most of the requests to consolidate the covid nightstands in Ciutat Vella. Ada Colau’s government always responded that it was acting with the objective of guaranteeing neighborhood rest, that a good part of the streets and squares in this district are saturated.
This is not exactly the first judicial setback that the municipal procedure has suffered in this regard. In recent months, at least six rulings refuted restrictions imposed by Barcelona City Council in the Ciutat Vella district during Mayor Colau’s first term. Then the local executive launched some 30 files aimed at eliminating or reducing so many nightstands. The latest resolutions on these files do not imply an automatic restitution of these terraces, but they open new battle fronts.
Furthermore, also recently, the government of Mayor Jaume Collboni withdrew a series of restrictions imposed in the Raval and the Gòtic in the previous mandate after detecting some formal errors that, he assured at the time, clearly predicted that the City Council would lose the lawsuit. filed by the Gremi de Restauració.
