Alotca update on new tourism law draft

[aspasia]

I was delighted to be able to offer news exclusively last week of a new tourism law (see HERE), and now, already, the draft legislation is being reported in the press. There are various aspects to it,  including a requirement for hotels to make renovations or risk being fined, and it stresses the Government's intention to "stamp out" illegal letting in residential property.

It seems it will also require those complexes which are touristic to provide the offer for which they were designed, rather than be changed into residential usage, which seems connected with the issue I reported of facilitating the return of touristic licences to "dormant touristic" complexes. These too, along with the hotels, will apparently be required to upgrade and renovate, with fines applied to those who fail to comply.

When Alotca had the last meeting with Turismo, the lawyers laid enormous stress on the need to allow the licensing of private villas. This is something we've stressed extremely heavily throughout our dialogue at various levels of Government. At what point, and to what extent, this has permeated policy I cannot say, but the draft suggests they've taken it on board at least to some extent. I don't want to raise hope recklessly here, and I want to check this out with the lawyers before I make a firm statement, but the draft legislation appears to me to go further than was initially offered.

As I said in my earlier post, it was already envisaged that villas on complexes that are currently residential, but whose land is or can be designated touristic, would be allowed to apply for touristic licences. Now, it seems that the law could allow the creation of  "zones" of individual villas in touristic areas which would form a type of complex, with a possible entitlement under certain conditions (e.g. percentage and density of villas to plot size) to change the land designation and acquire a touristic licence. Moreover, and tantalisingly, it hints at the possibility of independent villas in touristic areas themselves being able to acquire licences. As I say, I want to check out what this text actually means in practice before commenting further, but I think they might just be prepared to go quite a bit further in this one respect than their original stance. JA

[Nova]

 That sounds promising! 

[Janet]

The Canarian government yesterday approved clauses for the new law so as to provide a framework within which more than 5,000 villas in the Canaries that are currently residential will be able to be used touristically; moreover, their plots will be reclassified at Government level, thus bypassing where necessary individual Cabildo restrictions and Ayuntamiento land usage designations. The law will also considerably reduce the "coastal band" for villa legitimacy: the Government had been aiming for a 500m exlusion area but this has now been reduced to 200m, and even further to 100m if in a clifftop area. Lanzarote, which is where around half of the properties affected are located, is likely to benefit especially from the measure.

The final debate on the legislation is scheduled to take place this coming Tuesday. This is something that Alotca has lobbied actively for, and continued to negotiate about even though much of the work was carried out in the background. Although we'll have to wait until at least Tuesday for the final detail, needless to say we are absolutely delighted with this news. JA

[Nova]