The Gornal Neighbors Association has demanded the liberalization of 1,500 official protection apartments in the neighborhood and warns that it will call protests if the point of the Housing Law that maintains that qualification without an end date in stressed areas, as happens throughout L'Hospitalet, is not modified.
The neighborhood entity maintains that article 5.8 of Law 11/2025 fully affects the Gornal homes whose owners expected to be able to request, starting in November of this year, the document that would accredit their transition to the free market after 50 years. The association assures that this provision would also have an impact on more than 30,000 homes in Catalonia as a whole.
Neighborhood rejection of retroactive application
The AViV Gornal considers that the measure violates the right to property and contradicts deeds signed decades ago. Its argument is that, once 50 years have passed, those homes should already be governed by the free residential market, and it rejects that the norm be applied retroactively to old developments.
The entity asks that the limitation be reserved solely for future protected housing. In its opinion, the current wording prevents owners who have finished paying for their apartments from disposing of them with full capacity.
"What we want is to be able to request on November 4, 2026, the document according to which our home is free, that the property is ours" - Yolanda Martínez Pérez, president of AViV Gornal
Martínez Pérez insists that the law constitutes a restriction of rights on homes acquired under specific conditions. The association speaks of a partial expropriation of rights and calls for a legal correction before the deadlines stipulated in the deeds are met.
"This law violates our rights because it is a kind of partial expropriation of our rights, we are very clear about that" - Yolanda Martínez Pérez, president of AViV Gornal
A reform focused on old promotions
Article 5.8 of the Housing Law establishes that protected housing will maintain that condition without a time limit as long as it is located in a stressed area. In the case of L'Hospitalet, that consideration extends to the entire municipality, which blocks the declassification planned for the Gornal apartments.
The AViV recalls that in the city there are other promotions in a similar situation, such as those of La Remunta and those of Álvarez de Castro and Aprestadora streets, although with different terms of 20 and 30 years.
The purpose of that point in the law is to prevent protected housing from moving to the free market while residential tension is maintained. The association itself admits that this provision may serve to curb operations by investment funds or large companies that buy apartments to make them more expensive later, but maintains that it does not fit the profile of the current affected residents.
Political contacts and ultimatum before November
The AViV Gornal has met with various political forces in the Parliament to try to introduce a surgical amendment that preserves the rights of a neighborhood that, it argues, has effective ownership of its homes without speculative intent.
"They think that because we are owners we will be speculators with our homes, but we live in L'Hospitalet, not in Pedralbes or Sarrià" - Yolanda Martínez Pérez, president of AViV Gornal
The president of the entity also raises common family situations to defend the disqualification of these homes once the original deadline has passed.
"Let's imagine my family has grown and I need a bigger apartment, don't I have the right to sell an apartment that I've paid for for 50 years to buy a new one?" - Yolanda Martínez Pérez, president of AViV Gornal
In that scenario, the association assures that PSC and ERC would be open to changing the law, while the main reservations would come from Comuns. The entity wants a response before November, the month in which the 50th anniversary of the deeds that the residents of Gornal claim would be met.
If a satisfactory solution is not reached, AViV is already coordinating with other neighborhood entities in Catalonia to organize mobilizations. The objective is to pressure for the reform to distinguish between future protected developments and old homes whose owners claim to be able to fully exercise the rights that, they maintain, their deeds recognize.