The Town Halls are prohibited from granting authorizations for the installation of terraces on sidewalks of terraces of catering establishments attached to the facades of houses, even in pedestrian streets.
This is established by the Supreme Court in a ruling, of February 11, 2019, which determines that the circumstance that the municipal ordinance attributes the decision to install terraces in interior or exterior position on sidewalks, in pedestrian streets or streets with restricted vehicle access or in which the decision of the terrace model is also attributed to said services, if they are attached to the facades, they violate state regulations and therefore must be cancelled.
avoid discrimination
The speaker, Judge Trillo Alonso, recalls that Ministry of Housing Order 561/2010, of February 1, which develops the technical document on basic conditions of accessibility and non-discrimination for access and use of urbanized public spaces, establishes as a general condition of the accessible pedestrian itinerary that “it will always run next to or adjacent to the façade line or horizontal element that physically materializes the built limit at ground level”.
The sentence highlights that “the appealed City Council seems to forget” that the aforementioned requirement of the Housing Order “has the purpose of allowing a blind person to be able to orient himself in his wanderings with the line of the façade or horizontal element that physically materializes the limit built at the level of the floor”.
The speaker argues that “there should be no doubt that the occupation of the space immediately next to that façade line or that corresponding to that horizontal element, supposes an obstacle for those who, being blind, cannot take the façade line or horizontal element as a reference and In short, a limitation of their right of mobility through the public spaces that are the sidewalks”.
Trillo Alonso also explains that the reference in the appealed judgment to the extension and complexity of the Ministerial Order is not grounds for dismissing the challenge filed by the appellant association, nor is “the abstract and bare mention of priorities and exceptions, never specified, especially when, in addition to omitting any consideration of the interior terraces, the Room a quo focusing exclusively on the width of the accessible pedestrian itinerary, it does not notice that we are facing the protection of a fundamental and sensitive right”.
In this way, the High Court partially upholds the appeal of the Association of People Affected by the noise of Elche and annuls two articles of the Ordinance regulating the exercise of economic activities of said municipality, of the year 2013, insofar as it allows the installation of interior terraces .
The Supreme Court revokes for these arguments, the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of the Valencian Community, of February 2016, which dismissed in its entirety the appeal of the aforementioned Association against the ordinance.
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