Malaga city mayor declares war on tourist apartments

Malaga city hall’s October council meeting, which was due to take place on Thursday 31 October but has been postponed until Monday 4 November in view of the three days of national mourning for victims of this week’s floods, will deal with the subject of housing with a very important agenda item.

Mayor of Malaga Paco de la Torre announced on Wednesday 30 October that he, along with the city hall’s urban planning department, is looking at ways to ensure that there will be no more tourist apartments in the city centre. Instead he said the hotels would have “red carpet” treatment to be able to provide the city with the tourist accommodation it needs.

The left-wing parties, PSOE and Con Málaga, have called for a moratorium on tourist apartments, which they raised to two years, but De la Torre has said that the new third additional provision of the city’s PGOU general urban plan would be to implement measures to ensure that there would be no more than eight per cent in the areas where there is already a high percentage of this type of accommodation.

De la Torre explained, however, that as tourism is a strategic sector for the Spanish, Andalusian and Malaga economies, he would make it possible for there to be a greater number of hotels in Malaga, which would get “red carpet” treatment when it comes to construction, and that what Malaga city hall wants is a tourist with high purchasing power and greater spending power.

More five-star hotels

The mayor considered that Malaga needed more five-star hotels and that the proportion of 40,000 beds in tourist accommodation in the city was much higher than the 14,000 beds in hotels. He indicated that with regard to tourist accommodation, the city hall was studying with the Junta de Andalucía how long they should be authorised for, as to whether the licences should be for life or for “x” years.

De la Torre, who did not go any further on the strategy of banning more tourist apartments, which he said was under study, did focus very strongly on the benefits of a tourist tax which he believes should be implemented by the state and not the regional government, since in that case municipalities would have the option of implementing the measure or not.

In the case of Malaga, De la Torre stressed that it would be useful for tourist accommodation to contribute these amounts in order to make it easier for people who cannot afford to rent to have greater possibilities to do so, as he has already indicated on other occasions.

Regarding the ‘tourism-phobia’ which Vox deputy spokesperson Yolanda Gómez claimed could start to be worrying in Malaga, with reports in German newspapers indicating that the last demonstration in June criticised tourists, both De la Torre and the socialist spokesperson, Daniel Pérez, have stressed that there is no trace of tourism-phobia in the city.

However, De la Torre put the spotlight back on the 29 June demonstration and said that it would be better if the demonstrators were more prudent for the next one scheduled for 9 November and did not show this anti-tourist side. “Tens of thousands of Malaga residents make a living from tourism,” he stressed. “50,000 direct and indirect jobs,” he added.

In order to improve in the area of housing, the mayor, who was accompanied by the Partido Popular spokesperson, Elisa Pérez de Siles, indicated that the important thing is that there is more supply. He stressed the efforts made by Malaga city hall to build 5,300 VPO subsidised housing units in 20 years.

He said that three thousand homes are currently being developed in Cortijo Merino and in the SUB T-8 sector of the university. Regarding the housing crisis, he said that it is pressing throughout Spain and that for this reason it is necessary to improve the supply, explaining that 600,000 homes are sold every year in Spain, but only 100,000 are newly built.

Both Pérez, and the leader of Con Málaga, Toni Morillas, said that the ‘Málaga para Vivir’ movement has called the demonstration on 9 November to highlight the precarious situation of access to housing in the city. “We call on all the people of Malaga to participate in the 9N; the model of the city must change, because if it continues as the PP wants it will be even worse,” stressed Pérez, who made this public appeal to criticise the fact that there are “50,000 people expelled from Malaga” and that there are 31,000 applicants for subsidised housing in the city.

“The price of housing continues to rise exponentially, both for buying and renting, and this is unaffordable for the population,” he stressed. Pérez said he predicted a resounding success for the 9N demonstration, while Morillas, together with Con Málaga deputy spokesman Nicolás Sguiglia, before the mayor made the announcement to ban tourist flats, said they believe the city hall is “out of place and out of tune, and very nervous”, instead of attending to what the demonstrators demanded on 29 June and those who are going to take to the streets on 9 November. “There is little left to expect from the PP, they are operators at the service of landlords, rent-seeking and speculation,” Sguiglia pointed out.

This post was originally published on here