Stricter requirements for terraces on Calle Princesa: one meter from the road and it is forbidden to stack furniture on the sidewalk

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A bus on line 138 circulates in the direction of Plaza de España a few centimeters from the chairs of a terrace displayed on

.

This urban stamp will soon be prohibited, since the space reserved on the sidewalk for customers of bars and restaurants in this area of ​​Madrid will have to be located at least one meter from the road through which vehicles pass, twice as much as now.

The City Council of the capital is going to apply more restrictive criteria to these businesses to “free the pedestrian band and the tree and lighting band of furniture” and thus increase the surface on which pedestrians walk.

In practice, this will mean that

outside as to date, although the Vice Mayor's Government Area does not specify the specific number of those that will have to be removed.

The new measures have been agreed within the Hospitality and Restoration Terraces Commission and affect odd numbers on Calle Princesa from 1 to 17, between Plaza de España and Ventura Rodríguez, which belongs to

.

In addition to the minimum distance of one meter from the curb, provided that there are no separating elements from the roadway, it is established that the nightstands may not exceed a width of 2.4 meters.

"This implies that you will only be able to have

," explains Ángel, the manager of the 100 Montaditos on the corner of Plaza de los Cubos.

Its terrace, in fact, is the only one that a priori already meets all the new requirements: in addition to being at the correct distance from the road, it does not have umbrellas or awnings anchored to the pavement, which will no longer be authorised.

An awning of these characteristics currently exists in the night table of the Alboroto restaurant, at number 3 of Princesa, which on Wednesday morning remained closed and with its furniture stacked on the sidewalk.

This will be precisely another of the issues that will no longer be allowed after the regulations come into force,

, once it is published in the section of the City Council website dedicated to Joint Planning Studies.

Stacked furniture in the restaurant Alboroto.JM

On the other hand, umbrellas and dividers -in which gardening elements can be included- will be authorised, as long as they are mobile, but not those anchored to the sidewalk like the ones on the Café&Té terrace.

Their manager points out that

, but that in any case they will abide by them as they already had to do due to the anti-Covid measures.

Until now, furniture was allowed to be located half a meter from the curb and could occupy up to 50% of the width of the pavement, leaving an accessible pedestrian route of at least two and a half meters.

With the new regulations it will not be possible to put

that require electrical channeling and/or water supply.

In the Consistory of the capital they emphasize that this area is

and that it is characterized by its "great intensity of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, with considerable commercial, leisure and restaurant activity."

«The fact that there is no protection fence on the sidewalk together with the high bus traffic and the high speeds of the vehicles at certain times of the day means that the distance to the curb of the terraces has already been extended in practice, for the feeling of insecurity”, they point out.

Existing watchmen will have

to the new requirements.

In the case of the new authorizations that were being processed, they will have to modify their applications to adjust them to the aforementioned criteria.

This section of Calle Princesa was renovated a few months ago as part of the remodeling works for Plaza de España.

The bulk of the actions consisted of the suppression of a traffic lane and

, which went from five meters to more than eight meters wide.

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