My
Barcelona is being destroyed by mass tourism – but kicking visitors out isn’t
the answer
Xavier Mas
de Xaxàs
From petty
crime to a housing crisis, our city is suffering. Backlash is justified, but
sustainable tourism is part of our future
Mon 19 Aug
2024 07.00 BST
My city has
been stolen from me and I’m not getting it back. In Barcelona, we are
overwhelmed by mass tourism and there is no solution in sight. Our
vulnerability as citizens is mirrored by the experience of people who live in
other European tourist hotspots: Rome, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris or
Prague, where measures to curb tourism’s toxicity have been put in place with
varying degrees of success.
In
Barcelona, it is clear that efforts such as noise restrictions and one-way
systems in popular areas are not working, and this is why a grassroots backlash
is taking hold. The city has about 32 million visitors annually.
The
America’s Cup, starting on 22 August, health and business congresses scheduled
for the autumn and, above all, the ongoing promotion of the city as a party
destination will all combine to push the influx of tourists to a new high.
Tourism
accounts for 14% of the city’s GDP, employs about 150,000 people and generates
almost €12.75bn annually. But receiving 32 million tourists in a city of just
1.6 million residents also places a huge burden on the municipal budget.
Barcelona’s city hall estimates the extra financial cost in security, public
transport, maintenance and cleaning at €50m.
The rubbish
bins in La Rambla, the city’s main promenade, which has more than 200,000 daily
passersby, have to be emptied 14 times a day. The city council recently voted
to raise the tourist tax from €3.25 to €4 per person per night, but it will
have to be raised again to €6 to balance the budget.
Mass tourism
in Barcelona is a relatively recent phenomenon: it began in earnest with the
1992 Olympics. And it has taken tourism strategists 30 years to recognise that
their promotional strategy should switch to quality over quantity: more
cultural visitors and fewer stag or hen parties and backpackers. “That’s our
midterm goal and we’ll get there because we won’t build more hotels, or
authorise more cruises or tourist apartments,” says Mateu Hernández, CEO of
Turisme de Barcelona, the public-private consortium that runs the city’s
tourism sector. “The city is going to be more expensive, and it will push away
low cost and massive tourism.”
However,
that’s easier said than done. It’s not enough, for example, to play host to
luxury summits for global business or to tap into the health tourism sector by
offering VIPs 24-hour check-ups in luxury clinics with prices ranging from €900
to €4,000. Mateu agrees with the need for a comprehensive and long-term
approach, capable of measuring and evaluating the harm done by tourism and
adjusting policy accordingly. Tourism may generate jobs, for example, but do
more young people drop out of full-time education because they are tempted to
earn a wage tending a bar?
Tourism
attracts more drug trafficking, petty crime and sex work, all of which has an
impact on a city’s character. Local shops are often replaced by
tourist-oriented businesses. A few weeks ago the last bookshop in the seaside
district of La Barceloneta closed down. It was replaced by a cannabis shop.
There are now 25 cannabis shops in Barcelona, mainly in the old part of town,
the most heavily touristed. It’s an example of how difficult it is to preserve
the city’s original social and economic fabric.
Most of all,
gentrification caused by tourism is exacerbating a chronic housing crisis. This
is having profound social consequences for ordinary citizens losing long-term
tenancies as landlords seek to turn their properties into short-term lets and
tourist apartments.
Barcelona’s
mayor, Jaume Collboni, has announced a ban on apartment rentals to tourists by
2028, but the industry is expected to push back with a battery of legal
complaints. Today, there are 10,000 authorised tourist apartments in the city,
but many more are illegal, despite being listed on holiday rental platforms.
How can you
build a community-based city when the owners of the buildings, the apartments,
the shops and restaurants have no ties to Barcelona except to extract maximum
profit? International investment funds are snapping up commercial properties
close to the main tourist attractions and it seems impossible to convince them
that their profit is our loss.
Take the
beach as an example of what has gone wrong. Before the Olympics in 1992, we had
almost no beaches. The maritime front north of the old harbour belonged to
factories and shantytowns. Today, because of the games, we have more than 3
miles (5km) of beaches. The sea and the sand are a magnet for locals and
foreigners, families and partygoers. It shows how urban planning can bring an
industrial, depleted space to life.
This life,
however, has been sold to big tour operators, hotels, cruise ships and food
chains. Few locals now remain on the seafront and fewer will stay.
Barcelona
has always been an open city, a gateway to the Mediterranean and the Iberian
peninsula, multinational and multicultural. As a European crossroads it has
welcomed everyone. Workers from the Spanish south helped to build the city and
people from the global south keep it going. About 25% of the population is
foreign born.
But if mass
tourism keeps growing at current rates (Spain received a record 85.1 million
international tourists in 2023, up 19% on 2022), Barcelona and other
destinations will continue to lose their real identities and with them an
authentic tourist experience.
The
emotional reaction from some Barcelonians is to kick out the tourists. The
project against the airport’s enlargement has many backers, as has the mayor’s
recent proposal to limit the number of cruises.
But putting
up barriers won’t give us back our Barcelona. It is a model for contemporary
architecture and urbanism, for cutting edge art, culture and food. Only by
educating tourists and the tourist industry about the harms they are doing by
treating my city as a playground – instead of a community of people who must be
treated with respect – will the situation improve. And the tourists themselves
will benefit too: making local friends and better memories to take back home.
Xavier Mas
de Xaxàs is a writer for La Vanguardia
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