Housing project in Sant Andreu will also contain shops, offices and green spaces

Deputy mayor Janet Sanz underlines “importance” of giving city council regulatory powers from the beginning

The city council met with ‘top manta’ representatives on Wednesday

City representatives will soon sit with illegal street sellers to discuss their claims of "persecution and repression" by local authorities

Licence will cost Antoni Gaudí's landmark church €4.6m, making it the most expensive in Barcelona's modern history

Measure aims to ease city’s housing crisis, but opposition complains that local council already owns land not built on

Local authority calls on rental platform to remove unlicensed properties from its website

The Catalan capital’s action plan against illegal accommodation for tourists resulted in July in the closure of 256 apartments whose activity has been considered illegal, a figure which has to be added to the 112 orders announced in the first half of 2016. Besides ordering the ceasing of their activity, the accommodation websites responsible for the flats, Airbnb and Homeaway, will have to face a 30,000 euros fine for not having the required licence. This has been possible mainly due to the task of the so-called ‘flat scouts’, a figure recently created by Barcelona’s city hall, who have found 234 illegal accommodations, while the official inspectors in charge of this only detected 22. “This is not a summer campaign but an action plan which has come to stay” warned Barcelona’s deputy mayor for Ecology, Urbanism and Mobility, Janet Sanz and emphasised that tourism in Barcelona “is not related to seasons”.