Buy homes with one hand, adapt regulations with the other
- The Arabatur Association and its President, Pilar Perosanz, are the public faces of the tourist effort of the homes of the Casco Viejo de Vitoria-Gasteiz. But there's another person, who hasn't appeared publicly like this. Gustavo Antépara Benito. He and his company Luxury Rental Apartments are directly related to Arabatur and Perosanz. Antépara is an important member of the PP of Vitoria: he was a councilor at the City Hall of Vitoria-Gasteiz between 2016-2019; and since 2015 he has been a member of the administration of the council of the public society Ensanche 21 as representative of the PP. Then they make the main decisions related to urbanism in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Arabatur’s initiatives have generated great concerns and contradictions among neighbours. We have tried to give birth to some people, companies and interests that are behind the attempt to tourist the homes of the Casco Viejo.
Until February 2020, the possibility of renting private homes in the Casco Viejo de Vitoria-Gasteiz has not been regulated. It was then that the City Council approved the 13th amendment of the Special Plan for Integral Rehabilitation of the Historic Center (PERI), according to which only one housing per portal can be destined to tourism, necessarily the first floor.
To this standard, the association of entrepreneurs in the tourism housing sector Arabatur submitted an allegation in May 2020. Arabatur requested that the possibility of tourist accommodation be extended to any housing or, if not accepted, that full portals could be moved, if desired by all homeowners.
In July 2020, the City Council partially accepted Arabatur’s request, not allowing any housing to be used for tourism, but the possibility of using full portals. Numerous associations and neighbors of the Casco Viejo showed their concern and anger at the fact that the decision can significantly worsen the life of the neighborhood and presented 136 claims in October 2020. The City Hall’s response can come at any time.
What is Arabatur and who runs?
Arabatur was created in August 2017 as an association of “private individuals, small owners and managers of tourist accommodation in Álava”, according to its statutes. Since birth he has carried out a lobbying work in favor of the turistification of the dwellings: to plead, disseminate a message in favor of the turistification in the media or meet with the political groups of the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz, among others.
"We can assure that reality is different from what Arabatur Chief Perosanz says."
In July 2020, El Correo interviewed Arabatur president Perosanza: “Who are you? What is the profile of Arabatur’s partners?” asked journalist Jorge Barbó, “We are 30 members, small entrepreneurs from Vitoria, self-employed, with one or two floors. Within the association there are no big companies, no chains, no investment funds,” Perosanz replied. We don’t know if there are 30 Arabatur partners, or if they own “one or two floors.” We have not achieved the list of Arabatur partners.
But once we have researched several property registers, mercantiles, societarians or websites, we can ensure that the reality is different from what the head of Arabatur, Perosanz says. Luxury Rental Apartments does not “one or two”, manages at least nine homes in the city, seven of them in the Casco Viejo, on behalf of the company, the owner or other people connected to the company. The owner of the company Luxury is Gustavo Antépara Benito, councilor of the PP in the City Hall of Vitoria-Gasteiz during the period 2016-2019 and member of the board of directors of the public society Ensanche 21, who leads the urban policy of Vitoria-Gasteiz since 2015. Various data link Arabatur to the company Luxury and the relationship between Antéa and Perosanz comes from far away. Let's go step by step.
Purchase and tourist destination of the Old Town
Luxury Rental Apartments was founded in September 2020, but not from scratch, but as a result of the modification of the names and statutes of another company.
The Editorial and Communications Group Enea (GECE) was created in 2007. Until then it was called Grupo Enea Editorial S.C. and Pilar Perosanz was a commercial director, as you can read in his professional profile of the portal infojobs.net. The sole administrator of the GECE was Antépara, and its scope was officially linked to media advertising. In November 2016 Antépara was appointed councillor of the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz as an alternate member of Javier Maroto. In his declaration of assets, he stated that he was the sole owner of the GECE. In contrast, in his new declaration at the end of the 2019 legislature, he declared that he holds 50% of the GECE. Legal sources have explained to us that this change should be registered in the Commercial Register, without this information in the Register.
In July 2016, the Basque Parliament passed the Tourism Act, which deals, among other issues, with the regularization of homes for tourist use and bedrooms for tourist use. Although the concretization of this regularization was expected in the development of a specific regulation, with the approval of this law there was a noticeable increase in the movements of companies and people who wanted to develop this type of business. Also of the company Antépara, although, in principle, the type of activities declared – advertising and publishing – does not have much to do with tourist housing.
Between February and October 2017, the GECE discharged four homes in the tourist housing registry of the Basque Government, two of them in the Casco Viejo, in Zerkabarren Street, in San Prudencio Street, on the Paseo del Pórtico and in Calle Cutlería. The property of Paseo del Portico was registered on property by Pilar Perosanz between these dates in June 2017. And in August, the Arabatur association was created, presided over by Perosanz.
Between May 2018 and March 2019, the GECE and Antépara bought five homes and three storerooms in the Old Town: Four dwellings and two cabins of the same portal of the street Pintor, property of the GECE; the second floor of the same portal and a storage room of the street Knilería de Gustavo Antépara, which in turn was discharged in the Government registry in October 2017.
Cross-interests of Arabatur and Antépa
After all these movements and purchases, in February 2020, Antépa’s interests were put at risk: The Local Government Board of the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz, composed of representatives of the PNV and the PSE that make up the Municipal Government, agreed to authorize the apartments for tourist use only on the first floors.
"When in May 2020 Arabatur registered his claim, he gave the address of Antépa's company"
Two months later, Arabatur submitted his argument against this decision, the substance of which is fully in line with Antépa’s interests. Both the main requests of the allegation and the granting of the authorisation to allocate any housing to tourism. But also, if not accepted, the requests for full portals to be able to travel: Antéa owns all the dwellings of a portal of the Pintor Street and lacks one of the three dwellings of a portal of the Cutlery Street. Or perhaps that as well: until recently in the prestigious tourist accommodation website Gites, in this portal of the street Cutlery were offered three apartments for rent under the name of “Luxury Cutlery”. This would indicate that the company has control over the entire portal.
As for the relations between Arabatur-Perosanz and GECE - Antépa, there are several data. Perosanz was the commercial director of Grupo Enea Editorial S.C. before the company took the name of GECE. One of the holiday homes for rent offered by the company Luxury (el del Paseo del Portico) is owned by Pilar Perosanz since June 2017. In October 2017 Enea discharged a tourist housing in the government register: the contact email was from the GECE and the phone of Pilar Perosanza. When Arabatur submitted its claim in May 2020, the address provided is that of the GECE headquarters.
We have contacted the President of Arabatur, Pilar Perosanza, by telephone on Friday, 28 May, in order to ask and receive her comments on all this information. Expressing her desire to ask questions for “a report on the Regulation of Tourist Housing in the Old Town”, she asks that the questions be sent to her email to answer “better”. “If the questions I know are good, otherwise I will have to ask the association’s lawyer,” he said earlier, without having or asking for any details about the content of the questions. When closing the report, Perosanz does not respond to the email.
From ‘Enea’ to ‘Luxury’
Gustavo Antépara has continued to deepen the tourist housing business despite the fact that the City Hall initially opposed its interests.
In September last year he made significant changes to the company: on the one hand, he changed his name Grupo Editorial y Comunicación Enea a Luxury Rental Apartments; on the other hand, society changed its social object: “Hospitality activity, tourism services and, in particular, the exploitation and complementary activities of tourist homes and/or apartments”. The only administrator remained the same person: Gustavo Antépara Benito.
What is more: On the Luxury website, in addition to the homes we have garnered so far, there are at least two more, in the streets Zapatero and Hedagile. The portal where these dwellings are located is not defined by the website and the links are not active. Perhaps because it was not possible to be discharged from the Register, the City Council decided to suspend licenses and procedures in February 2020 until the final approval of the new regulations for tourist homes. Not on its website, but at least in another, it has offered unregistered weights, as is the case of the aforementioned Guitesa. Until recently, the website offered three apartments of the same portal on Calle Knilería. In addition, with Arabatur’s “seal” of recommendation. We cannot ensure that Luxury does not offer more housing anywhere else, nor that the company or Antépa has more ownership. On the one hand, the data from Vitoria-Gasteiz are divided into several property registries, and we have limited ourselves to searching for the data for this report in the registry that occupies the Casco Viejo. On the other hand, although this is normally the case, it is not mandatory to register in the Property Registry.
Private companies and public bodies
In recent years, therefore, Luxury Rental Apartments has concentrated homes for tourism in the Old Town, and Arabatur has tried to adapt the regulations of tourist housing to facilitate the tourist.
"The movements of Antépara and Perosanz can influence the future of the Old Town of Vitoria-Gasteiz"
In the same years Antéa has been a PP councillor at the City Hall of Vitoria-Gasteiz between 2016 and 2019 (in the 2019 elections he was on the party list but was not elected). And, above all, together with Miguel Garnica, he is one of the two representatives of the PP in the public society Ensanche 21, who leads the urban policy of Vitoria-Gasteiz since 2015. Ensanche 21 decides, among other things, on the land policy of Vitoria-Gasteiz and the Old Town, housing and housing rehabilitation policy. Even more so. The Directorate of Urban Management of the City Council proposed to partially estimate Arabatur’s claim on the basis of the favourable criterion of society: “As for Arabatur’s claim, it has been contrasted with the municipal urban society [Ensanche 21] (...) and the possibility of authorising homes for tourist use in whole buildings is considered perfectly justified and acceptable.”
Sparse and distorted information
Antépa and Perosanz defend their interests. However, they are presented as representatives of the owners with “one or two floors”, when the Antepara has at least nine properties. As if this were not enough, Antéa 21 is a member of the board of the Ensanche as representative of the PP. This position is especially noteworthy, as public society is the main decision-making framework for the city's urban policies. The Ensanche 21 has decided in the last decades the policies of housing rehabilitation in the Old Town. These policies have often been criticized by the neighborhood associations, because others have only provided subsidies for other reforms to those who have enough money to pay for those works, and not precisely for the residents who live in the most disadvantaged homes for lack of money. This makes it easier for impoverished residents to leave the neighborhood and for people with money to buy homes at a cheaper price. For example, then go to tourism, as you see in other cities. And the PP has also supported these policies in Ensanche 21.
The movements of Antépara and Perosanz can influence the future of the Old Town of Vitoria-Gasteiz. They have taken the flag of the location of the neighborhood and with these arguments the City Council partially accepted Arabatur’s claim. On the contrary, in the Casco Viejo de Vitoria-Gasteiz, the scarce decision that the institutions give to the neighbors in the decisions affecting the neighborhood is a complaint that has been repeated for decades. Information and debate have also been scarce on the issue of housing placement. And also, as we see, it's sometimes been distorted.
First of all, in the Casco Viejo a large influx of people has been shown and organized in recent months against the tourist housing. Why?
Achaques of Turistification
Experience has shown what is already happening in places where there are no tight limits to housing turification. The owners of homes for traditional rent tend to move on to renting for tourists or to sell to the large companies and investors of the sector, as is happening in the Casco Viejo. Sometimes for self-interest, sometimes for pressure. These transformations have serious consequences in neighborhoods such as the Casco Viejo de Vitoria-Gasteiz.
On the one hand, the number of rental homes is reduced and the price is increased. In the neighborhood of the city where more neighbors (23%) have to live in rent for their low income. In addition, these homes inhabited by neighbors would be filled with tourists who do not remain in the neighborhood, seriously jeopardizing community networks and neighborhood dynamics. Anyone who wants a more exhaustive analysis of the effects of the turistification can go to the report of "Housing Turistification", "No Rehabilitation of Historic Helmets" (ARGIA nº 2698).
"It's not too late to change, because the decision is still in the hands of the city council. It has not yet answered the 136 claims made by the neighbours against the decision to authorize the posting of full portals"
Risk of pregnancy; guarantee of proximity
Policies for the tourist use of housing require a thorough debate about the models of society and the neighborhood, the consequences of the turistification, the ways of making decisions, the decision points. This debate is essential today in the Casco Viejo de Vitoria-Gasteiz, knowing how it is driving the housing tourism. And this goes beyond the Arabatur partnership and the Luxury Rental Apartments company, which will follow and follow more: On May 15, the newspaper El Correo gave the main number of lines on the cover to the news item: “A German team has designed 33 tourist apartments in the Álava Velasco Palace.” It is a palace of the Casco Viejo (another) that has been abandoned for decades, occupied in December 2018 by the Vitorian feminist movement and emptied three months later by the Municipal Guard.
It is not too late to change, because the decision is still in the hands of the city council. It has not yet responded to the 136 claims made by the neighbours against the decision to authorize the posting of full portals. And the new rules still need to be ratified in plenary. There's time and possibilities to meet the demands of neighbors, there's no political will so far. However, the best guarantee to create other “wills” in the city hall, as in decades, remains the neighborhood and the citizen movement.
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