Barcelona plans to implement shared spaces so that dogs can go loose next year, according to municipal sources. This is a measure that the City Council has carried over from the past mandate and is now in the process of defining the proposal based on the distribution of the population of dogs in the city. These areas, called shared use zones by the municipal government, will be installed in at least 73 places, one for each neighborhood of Barcelona.

In these locations, the animals may be unleashed under the supervision of the owners in certain time slots, mainly early in the morning and late in the afternoon. The areas will be marked and located in different places, such as squares, stretches of streets, gardens or parks. Dogs considered potentially dangerous will have to be tied and muzzled, as established by the regulations.

The Espai Gos Bcn platform considers that the spaces proposed so far “are scarce”

To deploy these spaces, a decree will be drawn up after modifying the municipal ordinance on the protection, possession and sale of animals, approved in 2014. Specifically, it will be processed to eliminate the obligation for pet owners to have a possession card responsible citizenship so that he could go off leash at future set points. Municipal sources argue that this change responds to a “technical adaptation” of the norm to reality and that the card has never materialized due to its “complex administrative management and high costs”. The forecast is that the matter will be dealt with in the municipal commission of the presidency in July so that it is approved early in the plenary session and continues its processing until it obtains the green light definitively, presumably in the plenary session in October or November. Subsequently, the decree will be drawn up that will establish all the hours, so the Consistory calculates that its use will not occur until 2023. “Now, technical work is already being done and with the districts, but these areas will not be announced until that the modification of the ordinance be definitively approved, ”says the City Council. The municipal officials explained that in the past mandate the definition of these areas was addressed with neighbors and entities, but the outbreak of the pandemic forced them to rethink the use of public space. In some recently held neighborhood councils, such as in the Sant Martí district, this issue has been addressed and residents have been informed of the possible locations. Its implementation will be accompanied by an information campaign.

The citizen platform for dog owners, Espai Gos Bcn, considers that the spaces proposed so far are scarce. “There are districts that are more sensitive while others have offered very few and tiny areas. We do not consider anything closed, but the offer with which we work is totally insufficient for the volume of dogs in the city”, says Àngela Coll, spokesperson for the entity. He also laments the delay in implementing these areas: “The political management has been ineffective. The shared areas will have to be in operation since the last mandate. We are already in 2022 and we still don’t know exactly what they will be at the end.

As for the moratorium on not fining pets without a leash, they will be used “in any case” until the shared use areas are deployed, municipal sources assure. The Consistory promotes this strategy with the aim that 90% of citizens with a dog have a space for their pet less than ten minutes from home. Currently, Barcelona has more than a hundred recreational areas for rods, of which almost half have dimensions ranging between 300 and 400 m2.