The Girona Housing Union unfurled a banner with the slogan "let's end the housing business" next to the Cul de la Lleona and the Onyar river during the Temps de Flors festival, in one of the most crowded areas of the Barri Vell.
The protest highlighted one of the main contradictions the entity denounces. While Girona is experiencing one of its moments of greatest tourist projection these days, the union maintains that this pressure coincides with an increase in the cost of accessing housing, with rents above 800 euros per month and a 11% drop in contracts.
The union links Temps de Flors with tourist pressure in the Barri Vell
The organization framed the action during the Temps de Flors period because, in its opinion, the city suffers greater tourist pressure then and the Barri Vell area becomes the main tourist epicenter of the country.
Fàtima Aatar, spokesperson for the Girona Housing Union, stated that this pressure has consequences for the residents of the Barri Vell and for the rest of the city, by displacing the working class due to unaffordable rents.
"At the cost of expelling the working class due to unaffordable rents and it generates a domino effect in other neighborhoods of the city, increasing the price of housing throughout Girona" - Fàtima Aatar, spokesperson, Girona Housing Union
Furthermore, the entity maintains that the Barri Vell is among the most gentrified areas in Catalonia and denounces that its streets are accumulating more and more tourist apartments and Airbnb accommodations.
Girona exceeds 800 euros in rent and the province concentrates 18,000 tourist apartments
The data cited by the union point to an increasingly restricted market. The average rent price in Girona already exceeds 800 euros per month, while rental contracts have fallen by 11%.
Added to this trend is the purchase of housing. The average price exceeds 1,700 euros per square meter, a benchmark that, according to the entity, further distances access to housing for a large part of the working population.
In parallel, the province of Girona leads Catalonia in tourist use housing, with around 18,000 registered apartments. The union places a significant part of this concentration in the Barri Vell, where it denounces the substitution of residential rentals for tourist and temporary ones.
The entity relates this process to an increase in so-called silent evictions, linked to the replacement of residents in buildings and apartments that cease to be used as habitual residences.
The data that the union places at the end of its complaint is the size of the tourist housing stock in the demarcation, with around 18,000 registered apartments in the province of Girona, a figure that places it as the one with the most tourist-use homes in all of Catalonia.