The Local Police of Valencia has filed 156 complaints about illegal apartments in the first quarter of the year, more than double those that were filed throughout the year 2022 (73), while in 2023 there were 84. The council has thus responded to the arguments of the opposition after the PSPV has accused the Catalan government of giving an “open bar” to tourist apartments in the city.
According to the City Council, the supply of these tourist homes online when the PP came to government in 2023 was 10,118, while in February of this year it is 10,286, so it is “absolutely false that tourist apartments have increased with the PP, there are the same ones that there were when the left governed”, according to EFE in statements from the City Council.
Asked during her visit to the Casitas Rosas this Friday about the PSPV’s criticism that the volume of these homes had grown, the mayor of Valencia, María José Catalá, stressed that inspections of tourist apartments “have grown by 120% compared to to when they ruled”. “We are working with an ordinance that was not made in the eight years in which they were in government and we are combating irregular tourist apartments, which is what they did not do when they were in power,” she added.
The response is due to the press conference of the socialist spokesperson Sandra Gómez, who reported this Friday that in less than a year 3,297 tourist apartments have appeared in the city “and all of them illegal”, as confirmed by official data, since the legal supply has even decreased in the same period of time. According to the Visit València data offered by the socialist official, the city has gone from 7,318 apartments in January 2023 to the 10,286 that the City Council has located in all neighborhoods. The Visit Valencia website, with free access, allows you to see the number of registered apartments, the online supply and its corresponding demand.
“This overwhelming increase is the result of Catalá’s inaction to stop this phenomenon and the freedom that its government has given for speculators to convert the homes in our neighborhoods into tourist accommodation with all the consequences that entails, such as the increase in conflict. social in the form of inconvenience for our neighbors and, to a greater extent, a disproportionate increase in rental prices,” he stated.
Another of the issues raised to Catalá has been regarding criticism over the increase in the rental price of residential housing. The mayor has assured that there are reports such as that of the Polytechnic University of Valencia that reveal that “the Government’s Housing Law is to blame for the legal uncertainty that exists in the real estate market. The PSOE would have to reflect and change its own law.” , has declared.
Likewise, he has reiterated that the plan to control illegal apartments initiated by the current City Council government is still underway with continuous inspections in all neighborhoods of the city, with special emphasis on those with the most tourist demand, according to municipal sources.
“The socialists have distorted the data to hide the fact that, in reality, they did nothing to regulate tourist apartments,” they add. They also claim that the increase in illegal tourist housing activity increased “disproportionately” with Compromís and PSPV “due to the lack of inspection campaigns and the apathy of a government that was not at all concerned about this issue.”
They accuse the socialist municipal spokesperson, Sandra Gómez, of “following President Sánchez’s policy of lies and is concerned today about tourist housing, when in eight years as those responsible for urban planning in Valencia, the socialists did nothing to prevent the proliferation of tourist apartments”.
The apartments advertised on the platforms are not necessarily all illegal and the Visit València Foundation’s sources to track the data from the virtual platforms (Transparent) identify all the apartments available on certain dates, without differentiating those with or without a license. “To assume that all the new apartments are illegal is to lie,” the sources reported by EFE have assured.
In addition, they have highlighted that in the first two months of 2024, the city has received 11% more overnight stays than last year, the airport is breaking passenger records, air searches for the city’s main events also double digit compared to last year and in addition, the Valencia Tourist Card is doubling the figures for 2023.
