The package of measures announced Monday by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, with the aim of promoting the supply of affordable rentals has received good acceptance by the Consell Insular de Ibiza, mainly in relation to the fight against intrusion: “We have been claiming for years from the Consell Insular that the activity of tourist apartments is declared as an economic activity,” said the vice president of the Consell Insular, Mariano Juan .
Anyway, he said that “we are waiting to know the fine print of these announcements, which are just announcements for now, that the President of the Government has made on this important issue such as the issue of housing”, when asked by La Voz de Ibiza. Mariano Juan has celebrated the initiative of the proposal for tourist housing to be considered a business and to be taxed as an economic activity, including the application of VAT in those areas where there are difficulties of access to housing or tourist saturation. “In Ibiza we have been claiming for years from the Consell Insular to declare the activity of tourist apartments as an economic activity. If a hotel is an economic activity and needs a municipal activity license, we do not understand why a legal tourist apartment does not need the same municipal activity license,” he said. This would make it possible that “the City Council would have to give the corresponding license and, above all, that the City Council could also close this type of apartments in case they are illegal“. According to Juan, it would add “one more actor in the fight against intrusiveness against illegal tourist apartments. Not only the Consell could attack this type of apartments, but also the City Councils could do it too”. “We have been demanding for years that they change the legislation so that this can be possible and it has had to be the Supreme Court that, in a ruling relatively recently, has told the Government that, indeed, a tourist apartment is an economic activity, it is assimilable to an economic activity, a business activity. And, therefore, the Government has been forced to clarify this issue. Although, I repeat, we will have to see the small print of this issue and that it does not remain in mere announcements”, said the first vice-president.
In the same line
In addition, Juan added that “the rest of the measures, beyond the details, Some of them are in line with what we have been saying for some time”.
In this sense, he stresses the urgency of providing security to homeowners. “If small owners, many of whom have mortgaged themselves or have invested all their life savings, cannot be sure that those who do not pay will leave their properties, there will be no apartments for rent, there will be empty apartments”. “And in Spain what is left over are empty apartments, empty because of the insecurity of those who do not pay, because of the insecurity of those who take advantage of the system or because of the insecurity of those who take advantage of the social aids or the social measures that currently protect those who do not pay the owners”, he pointed out. Along these lines, he pointed out that the Govern’s program of Secure Renting by stating that “everything that is public guarantees, by which the public administration directly rents these properties to later rent them cheaper at reasonable prices, seems to us to be going in the right direction”. “To give security to small owners, who are not speculators, small owners who have put their savings in small properties so that they can rent safely, with guarantees, either with the administration or with the guarantee of the administration, will always be welcome and is something that we have been demanding from the Consell Insular for a long time,” he said. For Mariano Juan one of the big problems of housing in Spain “is the lack of security of the owners and this can help to solve it“.
Illegal rentals
However, the first vice president of the Consell Insular de Ibiza raises an inconsistency on the part of the government to “say that there are too many tourist apartments and Airbnb when the government itself has an open file. The European Union has opened a case against the government for not complying with legislation that would curb this type of advertisement”.
As La Voz de Ibiza had advanced, the central government ignores the efforts against this problem by not applying the new Digital Services Regulation approved by the European Union. the new Digital Services Regulation approved by the European Union, which regulates the which regulates the rights and obligations of platforms such as Airbnb and Booking on their published ads. “I want to remember that the European Union has an open sanctioning file against the Kingdom of Spain, precisely because the Government is not putting in place the famous national coordinator that should remove or help administrations to remove these illegal ads,” has raised Mariano Juan. So “it does not seem very coherent that the European regulation that obliges Spain to remove illegal ads is not being developed and on the other hand, illegal tourist apartments are being criticized. It is time that the Government, apart from slogans, put the batteries on this issue.” “We will always support the Government, just as we applaud that the tourist apartments are declared as activities and this can make the municipalities to close these apartments, we also demand the Government to comply with European law and that the coordinator, which is the National Commission that has to be dedicated to remove to urge and control the removal of ads that we are pointing out to them, put the batteries now, put resources, put human resources, put material resources and begin to require the platforms those withdrawn ads, “he concluded.
