Ada Colau and her government accumulate legal cases.

The Court of Barcelona has upheld the appeal filed by the commercial company Vauras Investments and orders the 18th Investigating Court of Barcelona to open the procedure against the mayor of the city, Barcelona en Comú, the councilors Marc Serra and Lucía Martín and an official for the alleged crimes of coercion and administrative prevarication.

This court inadmissible, finding no evidence of crime, a complaint from the company that is the investment fund that manages the building known as Bloc Llavors in Barcelona, ​​which was occupied for three years and that the Mossos d'Esquadra evicted in 2020 on the sixth He tried.

However, the Consistory fined the company 400,000 euros for not offering social rent to the six vulnerable families who occupied the property.

The Barcelona Court considers that the sanction imposed by the City Council "could be the spurious consequence of not agreeing to the Consistory's claims" to "force" the company to offer a social rental without ruling out the refusal to grant building permits as another "mechanism" for it to "fold to the municipal claims".

In its appeal, the company insisted on the "closeness" between the social services of the City Council with "squatter groups".

The order specifies that it should be investigated whether the defendants had a "behavior consisting of illegitimately compelling" the investment fund, which from the Consistory is called 'vulture', to force it to cede real estate for social rental, using for it as an "intimidating mechanism "the threat of not granting building licenses or not unblocking those that were already paralyzed.

Despite the fact that the magistrates admit the "competence" of the Barcelona City Council to "promote the achievement of social rental housing to preserve the social function of property, in line with what is established by the regulations issued by the Parliament", they detail that what "It would be criminally reprehensible, if true, is that, in order to obtain these assignments of housing for social purposes, the owners of real estate are pressured by paralyzing building licenses and causing them damage, in short, if they do not agree to that claim of the City Council" .

For this reason, they point out that the court must investigate whether the Consistory committed "supposedly arbitrary" practices to, "illegally", paralyze works already started on some of the investment fund properties, under partial licenses, demanding the rehabilitation permit comprehensive.

"It is therefore necessary to investigate the reality of this accusation, which does have a criminal appearance," says the Barcelona Court, which urges the investment fund to provide documentation that it considers to be evidence of prevarication before summoning the defendants to declare as investigated.

Vauras Investment acquired this building in the Poble Sec neighborhood of Barcelona in 2016 to rehabilitate apartments and then resell them.

It was occupied in 2017 and became known as Bloc Llavors.

By court order, they were urged to be evicted on several occasions, but local pressure prevented the police from achieving their goal until the sixth time.

In fact, charges and clashes were recorded in some protests, for which the City Council asked the Generalitat for explanations.

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