Alex Trelinski
VALENCIA City Council has closed down 160 unlicensed tourist apartments in a bid to curb their uncontrolled rise.
The Valencia Residents Federation recently held a meeting with council officials on the ‘need for inspections and a moratorium on new tourist apartments’.
“It is urgent to stop the avalanche we are suffering,” they said.
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Valencia’s Urban Planning councillor, Juan Giner, said on Tuesday they had authorised 160 apartment closures.
“The Valencia Policia Local is not handing out fines, but 160 orders for immediate closures,” Giner revealed.
Giner added that since the Partido Popular took over running the council in June, ‘we immediately put in place an inspection plan with 154 fines for illegal tourist apartments’.
During a council plenary meeting, he said that the authority will study changing urban planning rules with the aim of restricting, ‘with legal certainty and well-defined regulations’, the proliferation of tourist apartments.
Juan Giner stressed that the City Council will continue to increase inspections and complaints about illegal apartments.
“In just four months, the Policia Local has filed 166 complaints against owners of illegal holiday homes, more than double those that were filed in the whole of 2022 in which only 73 complaints were submitted”, he added.
