Palma City Council is threatening to withdraw the terrace extension licences, which allow bars and restaurants to put tables and chairs on parking spaces immediately outside their establishments, after several places overstepped the mark.
The ruling allowed nearly 4,000 people to get back to work and on Wednesday, Citizen Participation & Home Affairs Councillor, Alberto Jarabo, assessed the reaction.
He discovered that since the decree was approved 109 places have been cited by Local Police, most had broken the opening hours rule, but 14 were using more parking spots than they were supposed to.
Councillor Jarabo has appealed to restaurateurs to respect the rules.
"With the arrival of summer we are seeing a relaxation in the monitoring of the rules that we cannot allow and we have seen situations that we don’t like, such as inadequate distances between tables, excess occupancy and one restaurateur covered a disabled parking sign with black plastic bag," he said.
Councillor Jarabo also insisted that terraces must close at 2300, only occupy the space that they’re allowed, remove tables, chairs and umbrellas when the premises close and guarantee social distancing. Between 40% and 50% of the licences issued were for businesses that had no terrace previously.
1,000 Requests
Palma City Council has received 1,000 requests from businesses who want to occupy parking spaces outside their premises.
There are currently 820 authorised terraces in Palma, and nearly 100 were turned down because they wanted to use loading bays, taxi ranks or places that were not outside their premises.