We are residents,
not speculators.

Amid an unprecedented economic crisis and increasingly precarious working conditions, many city residents with insufficient resources have been forced in recent years to seek alternative and additional sources of income in order to make ends meet. Some of us chose to occasionally rent out our home or a room in it.

Since late 2016, Barcelona City Council has automatically fined properties rented through Airbnb without a tourist licence. Most members of this association agree with the spirit of this law. In fact, many of us have voted for the parties that promoted these policies. So, what happened?

Now, during the pandemic, the City Council has carried out a campaign of faits accomplis, enforcing the law swiftly and indiscriminately, with unclear procedures and inadequate notification, raising concerns about a clear revenue-raising motive.

As a result, these excessive penalties have unfairly fallen on hundreds of private individuals, most of them young people or modest families with fragile finances. We now find that most of the proceedings that had been suspended were reopened during the pandemic.

Many of our fellow residents are victims of this conflict between the platform and the City Council, with devastating consequences for their lives and health. Seizures of assets, costly and extremely lengthy proceedings and litigation, families pushed into hardship, and young couples who have had to leave the country or sell their homes to overcome this situation of helplessness, not to mention the psychological effects these events can cause.

It should be noted that no one in our association has continued the activity after receiving a cease-and-desist notice, and that all members of this association agree that the property speculation linked to tourism affecting our city must stop.