Consultation over the opening of commercial establishments on public holidays in the summer

Barcelona City Council is holding a consultation process on 8 October over shop opening on Sundays and public holidays during the summer in the city's tourist area, which currently includes the neighbourhoods of Ciutat Vella, Eixample, Sants-Montjuïc, Gràcia and Sant Martí.

To reach maximum consensus, the consultation process is aiming to gather, publicly and transparently, a diverse range of opinions on the issue, by extending the debate to other groups outside the commercial sector itself. So the groups that can take part will not just consist of retailers' and employers' associations, guilds, businesses and individual retailers but also unions, consumers' associations, residents' associations, members of the Citizen Council and the public in general too.

The consultation process will be carried out online, through a survey that can be accessed on Barcelona City Council's Commerce and Consumer Affairs website: www.barcelona.cat/consultacomerc. It can also be accessed on www.lamevabarcelona.cat.

The entire process will be implemented over a 3-month period: from October to December. The online survey stage will last 1 month, after which the results will be published for the contributions received, which will be analysed jointly with the results of other public and commercial sector reports and surveys that Barcelona City Council's Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs commissions from time to time.

All the information gathered will be presented later, during an event held in December that all the participating players will be invited to.

The aim behind this event will be to create a space for discussion and reflection, for the purposes of reaching maximum consensus over Sunday and public holiday shop opening during the summer. The process will end with an announcement of a final proposal that would be approved at the Full Municipal Council Meeting.

Seeking maximum consensus

This year the municipal government kept the regulations agreed to last year regarding city shops opening on public holidays. This meant that shops located in Barcelona's tourist areas could open for eight hours on Sundays during the months of July and August and up to 15 September, from 10 am to 6 pm.

But once this period was over, the new city government demonstrated its commitment to restarting its dialogue with the retail community, political groups, unions and consumers and reaching a consensus for the benefit of all concerned.

The Council is aiming to play an active role in promoting alternatives to the deregulation of shop opening hours. Despite the legitimate interest that some of the city's shopping hubs have in making the most of the presence of tourists in the city, the City Council's priority is to ensure that traditional, family and local commerce is not harmed by liberalised opening hours.