BarcelonaThe mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, already has a date for his first major political test of the term. The fourth deputy mayor, Jordi Valls, announced this Friday the convening of an extraordinary Economy commission next Tuesday to submit to a vote the fiscal ordinances for the next term and the proposal to increase the tourist surcharge on cruise ships. Two key debates that the municipal government aspires to push forward before facing a folder that at first glance seems much more complicated: the budgets.
In a press conference, Valls said he is confident he can move forward with both the ordinances and the new surcharge because, he said, both are measures that stem from previous agreements with ERC and the Commons. In the case of municipal taxes, he explained that they will be continuist and will maintain the government's philosophy throughout the mandate of increasing tourist taxation and practically freezing the taxes paid by the city's residents.
In this sense, the deputy mayor specified that the 2027 ordinances will include the agreement that Valls himself closed with Barcelona en Comú a year ago: raising the IBI (Property Tax) for luxury hotels from the current 1.17% to 1.3%, the legal maximum. The law allows the councils of cities like Barcelona to set a differentiated IBI rate for the 10% of properties with the highest value in the city, a category in which there are 233 properties, of which 203 are luxury hotels.
In addition to the ordinances, Valls explained that he will also bring to Tuesday's commission the proposal to increase the municipal surcharge on cruise ships, which are those that spend less than 12 hours in the city. In June, the PSC, ERC, and Comuns reached an agreement in Parliament that allowed – through an amendment to the accompanying law – for Barcelona to triple the surcharge on cruise ships, going from the maximum of 8 euros per day to 24 euros.
Now the municipal government is landing that agreement with a proposal that plans to gradually raise the surcharge. Thus, the forecast is that in 2027 this surcharge will go from the current 5 euros to 12, and then increase at a rate of four euros each year until reaching 24 euros in the year 2030. An increase, mind you, that will have to pass a vote in the council annually. The City Council calculates that if it manages to approve all the increases, by the year 2031 the surcharge on cruise ships in port could leave up to 23.7 million euros more in the municipal coffers. However, Valls has stressed that the goal is not to increase revenue, but to dissuade this type of offer.
The conditions of the 'comuns'
To move forward with the ordinances and the new tourist surcharge, however, the municipal government will need the votes of Barcelona en Comú and Esquerra. In the case of the former, on Monday they already put a demand on the table: to raise the tourist surcharge for luxury hotels to 8 euros this year. A request, however, that the municipal government already rejected on Wednesday in the Economy committee, arguing that the agreement they had until now with the republicans and the comuns was to raise this surcharge by one euro each year and not all at once.
Collboni announces a fund to buy iconic shops
The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, announced this Friday the creation of a fund to acquire commercial premises in order to "preserve their activity" in the neighborhoods. During the inauguration of the European Forum of Cities and Local Commerce, Collboni did not give details on how much money will be in this fund or how it will work, but he said that there are businesses that "because of the role they play in a commercial axis or because they guarantee a necessary service" must continue.
On the other hand, the Minister of Business and Labor, Miquel Sàmper, who also participated in the kickoff of the event, explained that a working group will be created with the city councils to provide themselves "with a legal framework" to exercise the right of first refusal on premises considered of general interest.
