The Plaza de Ramales, between Ópera and the Palacio Real, has been the scene of a strange judicial conflict for a decade.
The person in charge of the Café de los Austrias manages, sentence after sentence, that most of the locals around him cannot even install a modest terrace.
The QW Restaurant is one of its victims.
It is the first business of Álvaro Morón, a 31-year-old chef who has been working in the sector for a decade.
But this small establishment in the center of Madrid is on the edge of the precipice.
Like many others, it depends on a terrace permit to avoid being shipwrecked.
The place had for a short time that concession from the City Council for six tables in 19 square meters.
But pressure from the head of the Café de los Austrias put an end to her.
Madrid relaxes hours and limits of diners: the hotel business may open until one in the morning
The Madrid City Council withdrew the permit with the excuse of a judicial ruling of July 2020, which settles an old conflict between several locals over the occupation of the square with watchmen. The revolution of the terraces that the City Council aired almost daily as a tool to combat covid-19 and help the hospitality sector has not arrived there. “With the virus, terraces have been opened across streets in many districts,” regrets Álvaro Morón, who has only been able to remove three workers from the ERTE because he cannot offer service abroad. Four other employees remain without reinstatement. "I don't think they will come back," he predicts.
In the Plaza de Ramales there are only two terraces today: that of the Taberna de Ramales, with 23 tables, and that of the Café de los Austrias with 22 tables, of which seven occupy the nearby Amnesty Street. The person in charge of the cafe managed to overthrow in the courts the reorganization of the public space that the City Council carried out five years ago and that allowed other hoteliers in the area to have the right to watch in the square. His crusade against competition has spent years keeping this businessman in a constant legal battle against individuals and institutions so that the tables of his establishment are not reduced.
When the City Council granted permission to the premises of numbers 12 and 14 of Vergara Street - a path that runs next to the Plaza de Ramales - businessman Ricardo Agustín Skipiol went to court. A judgment of July 16, 2020 of the second section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber denied the appeal of its competitors and confirmed that the municipal reorganization was not possible.
The legal argument is that Vergara Street has “a considerable intensity of traffic” and the municipal ordinance that regulates the watchmen provides that, if the passage of vehicles is high, the permit may not be granted, in case the workers have to cross to serve customers. The issue, wield the hoteliers affected, is that circumstances have changed enormously since then: first, with the entry into force of Madrid Central; later, with the pandemic.
In addition, Morón, and other businessmen in the affected area, point out that the City Council hides behind the judicial decision to apply the law strictly, but does not do the same with the Café de los Austrias. It has seven tables set up on Amnesty Street, which are located in an area considered to be an evacuation route for emergencies. Something that the Consistory also admits. And that exasperates the other hoteliers affected by this conflict.
This is the case of the Toma Jamón tavern, which closed in February of last year, just before the first blow of the pandemic.
Then, police officers together with municipal technicians removed the terrace, which was still open despite lacking a permit since the end of 2019. They had already taken it away on some previous occasion, like others in the square, including the Café de los Austrias .
A spokesperson for the Vinotium group, to which the tavern belongs, acknowledges that they rushed everything they could because the terrace accounts for 71% of the establishment's income.
“The City Council did a review and this man won in court.
I do not understand.
(…) Nobody understood that sentence.
They wanted to reorder the square, he appealed and the judge agreed with him, even with very strange arguments ”.
Víctor Erráiz, one of those responsible for the group, wants to make it clear that Toma Jamón closed due to the open conflict with Café de los Austrias and removes the responsibilities of Taberna de Ramales, the other business that today maintains its terrace. In fact, Erráiz insists, the ten establishments of the Vinotium group continue to operate, despite the restrictions due to covid-19, and in a few days they open another. "In this case there is a man with a lot of power and influence who has decided that the square is his and has intimidated the City Council," he says. EL PAÍS has visited the Plaza de Ramales twice this week to try to get to know the point of view of that businessman Ricardo Agustín Skipiol, but it has not been possible, either personally, or over the phone.
The sentences are on their side and that is the main argument that the City Council uses so that both the Toma Jamón, already closed, and the QW Restaurant do not have a terrace permit.
A spokesman insists that the court decision annuls the permission of the City Council.
Álvaro Morón inside his premises, the QW restaurant, shows the arrangement of the six terrace tables that he had in the Plaza de Ramales Luis de Vega
Traffic has decreased since the new Madrid Central ordinance was applied in 2018. On Vergara street at the height of the Ramales square, where the judge argues the existence of high traffic density to annul the right to a terrace, three vehicles passed this Tuesday afternoon in the ten minutes in which a reporter from THE COUNTRY was pending: a taxi, a private car and a third from the City Council.
“Do you always understand the judges' sentences?
Neither have I, ”says a former municipal technician who knows well the bureaucracy surrounding terrace permits.
But "if a judge says one thing, it cannot be argued."
“The City Council did a review and this man won in court.
I do not understand.
(…) Nobody understood that sentence.
They wanted to reorder the square, he appealed and the judge agreed with him, even with very strange arguments ”.
A partner stayed on the road
In the fight for his business, Álvaro Morón has held meetings both with the team of Mayor Manuela Carmena (2015-2019) and with the current team of José Luis Martínez-Almeida, with whose technicians he was last week. He is surprised that a court ruling makes everything that may happen
a posteriori
in the capital
immovable
. The employees of the Town Hall try to explain to him from behind the scenes that he is not without reason.
"We have only enjoyed the terrace for three months," explains Morón, jaded after losing his partner throughout the brawl.
He says that the person in charge of the Café de los Austrias denounced his business partner for threats in a trial that the hotelier in the Plaza de Ramales lost.
Morón adds that when the permission to install the nightstand was withdrawn and he found that the business was not going to be as prosperous as they thought, he ended up throwing in the towel.
“My partner had a heart attack and almost died.
I have been able to continue because my family helps me ”.
But he does not know how long it will last without a terrace.
Almeida and Villacís seek an agreement
The City Council is looking for a way to clarify the future of the terraces approved in the framework of the restrictions due to the pandemic. Many of them are located in the parking strips and now the doubt arises, with the evolution of the virus, about what will happen to them. The solution could come in the form of a new municipal ordinance. The team made up of PP and Ciudadanos has not yet reached an agreement on the matter with which to satisfy both the hospitality union that survives with these terraces and the residents of the capital who feel annoyed by the increase in watchmen in the street. Ciudadanos has been from the beginning more favorable than the popular ones to allow the continuity of the new terraces.
The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida (PP), has reiterated this Thursday that
The municipal government has seven months ahead, until the end of 2021, to work "hard and with discretion" to carry out a new ordinance for terraces compatible with the new situation. "We have told hoteliers and neighbors that we have to sit down, that we have to make a new terrace ordinance, where we will contemplate all aspects related to it and that allows us to make a final decision about covid terraces, beyond 1 January ", he said according to statements collected by Europa Press. For Almeida, who met with representatives of the sector on Wednesday, what they have to do is "work hard and work in agreement with the neighbors, merchants and hoteliers." They pampering, according to the mayor, understood that their priority was "guarantee neighborhood coexistence ".
For her part, the Deputy Mayor Begoña Villacís (Citizens), has opted to find
the "balance" in the expansion of terraces by Covid-19 and has pointed out the importance of achieving an agreement "in a shared manner" between the hoteliers and the neighbors. Villacís recalled that in the month of December, when the expansion of terraces to parking strips expires, the Temporary Employment Regulation Files (ERTE) will have ended and many positions will be transformed into "real layoffs", for what can be a "very serious problem" of unemployment in Madrid. "I am concerned that we may give up jobs," Villacís said in an interview on Telemadrid. Thus, he has argued that he is in favor of maintaining the parking strips for the terraces but "not in a linear way in all the places" but that you have to negotiate with neighbors,shops and hoteliers to "reconcile all interests". "We are doing everything possible," he said.
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