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
