In a protest mixing whimsy and frustration, 1000’s of Barcelona residents turned towards mass tourism on Saturday. They had been armed with an unlikely weapon: the water pistol.
The Las Ramblas district—a preferred vacationer web site—became an impromptu waterpark as protestors squirted water weapons at unsuspecting vacationers having fun with their al-fresco meals.
Video footage from CNN reveals a pair of boys hobbling away from a water-gun assault, ice cream nonetheless in hand. One other lady, along with her hair soaked, awkwardly scurried away from the barrage because the protestors yelled at her and her vacationer friends to “go home.”
Whereas the protest strategies could also be light-hearted, the protestors’ sentiments weren’t. The Assemblea de Barris pel Decreixement Turístic (ABDT), which organized the protest (however instructed Fortune that the water weapons had been spontaneous) argue that residents “suffer directly” from the record-breaking inflow of vacationers that go to town yearly.
Because the pandemic, vacationers have visited the historic metropolis in document numbers—in 2023, 23 million guests stayed in a single day in Barcelona, dwarfing town’s inhabitants of 1.62 million. These guests additionally spent €12.75 billion ($13.8 billion), or about 15% of town’s revenue, in line with Barcelona’s Metropolis Council.
But, the ABDT argues the typical citizen doesn’t take pleasure in these earnings, and as an alternative faces hovering housing prices, precarious employment, and a decrease high quality of life.
Housing prices
Hire costs have soared within the Spanish metropolis by 68% over the previous decade, whereas the price of buying a house has elevated by 38%, in accordance to Jaume Collboni, Barcelona’s mayor. He and different metropolis council officers blame the explosion of the short-term rental market within the metropolis for driving up prices.
Final month, throughout a metropolis council press convention, Collboni revealed Airbnb-style short-term housing leases could be banned from town by November 2028. The transfer would make about 10,101 flats obtainable for long-term leases.
“We are confronting what we believe is Barcelona’s largest problem,” Collboni mentioned on the occasion. He added the housing affordability disaster has notably affected younger folks, and has turn out to be a significant driver of inequality within the metropolis.
The mayor who served within the eight years earlier than Collboni, Ada Colau—who had a historical past of left-wing activism earlier than taking workplace—additionally took plenty of steps to curb short-term leases. These insurance policies embrace limiting the variety of lodge beds permitted within the metropolis, banning new motels within the historic middle, and forcing landlords who wish to hire their flats on Airbnb to acquire a vacationer license by way of metropolis corridor.
“Barcelona has tried to introduce some bold strategy,” Anna Torres-Delgado, a analysis fellow and knowledgeable in Barcelona tourism on the College of Surrey, instructed on-line journal Causes to be Cheerful. “In some ways it has been useful and has worked well in the historic center.”
Nevertheless, protestors say these insurance policies usually are not sufficient. A spokesperson from ABDT instructed Fortune that Collboni’s insurance policies solely purpose to swing from residence leases to motels, that are “equally built on housing buildings, so the problem remains.” The spokesperson additionally accused Collboni of attempting to learn motels, that are “historically related” to the mayor’s Socialist Get together of Catalonia.
Amongst different tips, ABDT’s manifesto requires the elimination of vacationer flats and a ban in constructing extra short-term rental housing.
Pandemic isolation
In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, town suffered from tanking customer numbers. Bars, retailers, and eating places shuttered their doorways as one of many important sectors of the financial system–tourism–faltered, prompting debate that town wanted to diversify its financial system.
That’s a part of ABDT’s argument. The group’s spokesperson mentioned the pandemic was “much harder” on Barcelona’s touristy neighborhoods and that specialization in tourism makes town extraordinarily weak to a number of points, like “pandemics, geopolitical changes, terrorism, tourism trendies and so on.”
Nevertheless, the quiet supplied residents with a chance to re-discover their metropolis.
“We don’t want life to be like it was in the pandemic but it also gave us a chance to see that there were other possibilities without massive tourism,” Martí Cusó, who lives within the Gothic Quarter, Barcelona’s busiest vacationer space, instructed The Guardian.
“My barrio is so saturated with tourists it’s impossible to meet someone in the street or for children to play or even to get a good night’s sleep,” he says, including that the pandemic supplied a “missed” alternative to rethink town.
Most residents, nevertheless, have a constructive view of tourism, in line with town council’s report “Perception of Tourism in Barcelona 2023.” Some 70.9% of individuals imagine tourism advantages town, an increase of 4% in comparison with 2022.
But, even those that acknowledge that tourism is crucial to Barcelona’s financial system have turn out to be disillusioned by the inflow of vacationers, in line with the report.
“More and more people believe that Barcelona has reached its tourism capacity limit,” it says.
