The terraces on Enric Granados win the legal battle and will not have time restrictions

BarcelonaBarcelona City Council faces several open legal battles that are causing it considerable headaches. One of these concerns the restriction of outdoor seating hours. This Tuesday, the Restaurant Guild announced a new ruling against the council's interests in one of the streets where the battle to reduce outdoor seating hours was fiercest. The administrative court has overturned the measure that forced the terraces of Enric Granados to close at 11 p.m. from Sunday to Thursday and at midnight on Fridays and the eves of public holidays.

This setback adds to others the City Council has already experienced in recent years. In 2023, it had to backtrack and cancel the measure around George Orwell Square and Joaquim Costa Street due to procedural errors, and last March it received its first adverse ruling. In that case, the city's Administrative Court No. 12 sided with the Restaurant Guild and overturned the reduction in opening hours for terraces in Plaça del Sol, in the Gràcia district.

In the case of Plaça del Sol, the ruling considered that the acoustic impact assessment report with which the City Council justified the measure was invalid because the sound level meter was not placed close enough to the building facades. Now the argument is different. In this case, the court determined that the city council violated the Guild's right to file arguments on its own behalf, that is, as a business organization, regardless of whether or not it also did so on behalf of its member establishments. While the City Council did file an appeal in the case of Plaça del Sol, it did not in the case of Enric Granados, so the ruling is final. Starting this Tuesday, the terraces on this avenue in the Eixample district can reopen with their previous hours. That is, until midnight from Sunday to Thursday, and until 1:00 a.m. on Fridays and the eves of public holidays. The restriction on opening hours for bars on Enric Granados was a measure implemented by Ada Colau's administration in response to complaints from the Neighborhood Network Against Noise, which in 2022 reported that practically every resident—there are about 1,600 people living there—would have a place on one of the 1,324 outdoor chairs.

A working group

In its statement, the Restaurant Guild considered that the ruling regarding Enric Granados Street should mark the beginning of a new era in the management of outdoor seating areas. Therefore, the organization will propose to the municipal government the creation of a working group to conduct a new assessment of the situation during the coming year.