46% of the premises over 100 square meters are prohibiting smoking. The rest, well the rest are in the grey zone since the 1st of September when the New anti-smoking law came into effect.
In the last three months, the Generalitat has made 903 inspections and it has been discovered that 56% of the bar and restaurant premises are complying with the new law. 30 premises have been fined for not complying with the new law. Sixteen of these fines oscilate between 600 and 1000 euros. According to the general director of Public Health, Antoni Plasencia, “the intention of the inspections consists in trying to get premises to adapt to the new law, therefore fines are only imposed if upon a second inspections the law is still not complied with”. The responsible of Public Health claims that the implementation of the new law is very positive and the fact that over half of these premises have decided not to allow smoking in their interior has facilitated to a great extent the whole procedure. “It has to be taken into account that 70% of the Catalan population does not smoke”.
