The Boqueria market on Las Ramblas, once a place where residents and chefs shopped leisurely for raw ingredients, has become one of the most packed tourist sites in Barcelona. Photo / Maria Contreras Coll, The New York Times
Thousands of local protesters in the Spanish city have denounced overtourism. With more crowds expected for the America’s Cup, The New York Times visited the areas where tensions are highest.
On a steamy August evening, a stream of young people bearing boxes of pizza and bottles of cheap cava began the uphill slog to Carmel Bunkers in Barcelona. Set on a hill overlooking the Catalan capital, the concrete structures once housed antiaircraft weapons that protected the city during Spain’s civil war in the 1930s. Later the site became a destination for residents on evening strolls and a hangout for local youths.
But that was before Instagram and TikTok.
Several years ago, inspired by social media, young tourists began making the Bunkers a favourite spot for drinking, carousing and the inevitable sunset selfie. Last spring the noise, litter and sheer number of visitors spurred the city to erect fences around the site.
Now, hundreds of visitors find any space they can amid the surrounding scrub and rocks. Or they simply jump the barriers.
“I used to play there as a girl,” said Manoli Fernández, 57, a longtime resident out strolling with her daughter and 87-year-old mother. “Now there are drunk tourists peeing on our neighbour’s doorstep.”
For anyone hoping to understand the complicated contours of overtourism in Barcelona, the Carmel Bunkers is a good place to start. The frustrations experienced by those who live nearby apply to other hot spots: residents of the Gothic Quarter who feel displaced by the crowds; pollution along the waterfront where massive cruise ships dock; and everywhere, it seems, an apparent disregard for local culture.
Last month, Barcelona made worldwide headlines when roughly 3000 residents protested against tourism, some squirting visitors on the city’s famed boulevard Las Ramblas with water guns. News outlets speculated that tensions over tourism, which have been simmering for years, not only in the Catalan capital, but across Europe, had finally boiled over into outright hostility.
In Barcelona, there is a new sense of urgency to solving a problem whose origins there can be largely traced to the 1992 Olympic Games, which introduced legions of travellers to the charms of the city, and transformed its fortunes. The arrival of Ryanair in 2010 had a major impact, initiating a new era of low-cost tourism, and a sharp growth in cruise travel poured hundreds of thousands of day-trippers into the city. Platforms like Airbnb spurred the conversion of residential housing to more profitable short-term rentals.
Then, following the pandemic, came “revenge” tourism, when throngs of people arrived after two years of lockdown. This year, the number of visitors is expected to surpass pre-pandemic levels.
Perhaps even more significant than the renewed presence of tourists is the absence that preceded it. As Daniel Pardo, 48, cofounder of the Assembly of Neighborhoods for Tourism Degrowth, which helped organise the recent protest, said, “During the pandemic, we recovered the spaces and customs that tourism had forced us to abandon. You could have a coffee at a table in front of the cathedral, or chat calmly with your neighbours on the street. There were even beautiful scenes like children bathing in the fountain in the Plaça Reial.”
Today, the fountain is again a noisy perch for tourists sucking from beer bottles as the city of 1.6 million struggles to accommodate what tourism officials say will be at least 13 million visitors. Their impact includes skyrocketing housing prices, dirty beaches, crowded thoroughfares and the transformation of historic neighbourhoods into what locals refer to as “theme parks”.
Yet, as Mateu Hernández, the managing director of the Barcelona Tourism Consortium, said, “Barcelona has developed more tools to manage tourism than maybe any other city.”
In the last decade, the municipal government has banned new hotel construction, raised the tourist tax on accommodations, limited the size of groups in congested areas, and even had one public bus line popular with tourists removed from Google Maps. By the end of 2028, a new regulation will eliminate short-term vacation rentals.
Economically, Barcelona remains reliant on tourism, which contributes 14% of the city’s revenues and directly employs 150,000 people. Hotels, vacation-home hosts, restaurant servers, kiosk owners – all are adamantly opposed to anything that might disturb the golden goose.
As a result, the city finds itself limiting some kinds of tourism while encouraging others. For instance, beginning August 22, Barcelona will host the America’s Cup, an international sailing competition expected to draw tens of thousands of people.
A weekend spent crisscrossing the city shows just how complicated the attempt to balance these competing needs can be. But according to the deputy mayor responsible for tourism, Jordi Valls, the city has no choice.
“We have to come up with policies that manage the reality, which is that tourism in Barcelona has been a success, and that it could lead to our ruin,” he said. “We have to understand that the demand is unstoppable. The only thing we can do is control the supply.”
On a recent Saturday morning, two inspectors were trying to do just that. Pressing insistently on a doorbell in the elegant Eixample neighbourhood, Alba and R (each asked to give only part of their names because some inspectors have received threats) waited until a sleepy-looking man, chest bare, belt unbuckled, opened the door. Reluctantly, he answered the inspectors’ questions in a mix of Italian-inflected Spanish and English. Yes, he had paid for a room after booking it online; no, he didn’t know the people staying there. “So,” Alba explained to the unsuspecting lodger, “this is an illegal rental.”
In a city with an acute housing shortage and exorbitant rents, Alba, R and 25 other inspectors are part of the effort to control how many apartments are converted into tourist rentals. In 2014, the city began requiring property owners to secure permits for rentals of fewer than 31 days, and the inspectors have been busy ever since.
The combination of reduced housing stock and rising prices has meant that many residents cannot afford to live in the centre. “It’s a zero sum game,” said Eduardo González de Molina, a sociologist at Carlos III University in Madrid and a former adviser for the Barcelona Housing Authority. “Every tourist apartment is one less for a family.”
Jaume Collboni, the mayor, recently announced that Barcelona would revoke the 10,100 permits currently in effect in 2028. Coupled with a 2017 cap on the construction of new hotels, the measure will reduce even further the 155,000 beds in the centre that are legally available. According to an Autonomous University of Barcelona study, Airbnb has driven up rental prices in the centre by 7%. But opponents of the measure point out that housing costs have risen far higher – 66% in the last decade – and that the number of permits for tourist apartments has been frozen at roughly 10,000 since the licences were introduced in 2014.
“If the cost of housing has risen in the last several years, it’s not the fault of tourist apartments because the amount of them has stayed the same,” said Enrique Alcántara, president of Apartur, a property manager association that is suing the city for a regulation they claim unconstitutionally revokes their licences. More to blame, Alcántara said, is the lack of new construction and the unregulated leases enjoyed by expats and digital nomads.
An Airbnb spokesperson responded to an interview request with a statement: “The root causes of housing and tourism challenges in Barcelona and Spain are a lack of new homes being built and decades of hotel-driven mass tourism, which accounts for the vast majority of visitors to Barcelona each year.”
Only about 30% of overnight visitors stay in rentals. And since being fined in 2018 for allowing illegal listings, Airbnb has required hosts to register their permit numbers.
But Alba, the inspector, said she has seen firsthand how some property owners, especially those who have bought multiple apartments and converted them to tourist rentals, are skirting the system with unregistered listings on other rental platforms. As someone who can’t afford to rent in the centre, she doesn’t think the plan to eliminate tourist apartments is going to put her out of a job. “The opposite, actually. I think it will mean we have a lot more work.”
Midday on a Saturday, Las Ramblas, the thoroughfare that was once lined with boutiques and stalls selling flowers and birds, is a mass of sweaty tourists. One side of the street is torn up with construction that will eventually mean wider sidewalks and new green spaces. But for now the boulevard remains a morass of souvenir stands, currency exchanges and cafes serving sangria and microwaved paella.
“Tourists consume certain kinds of services that locals don’t, and vice versa,” said Ayman Tobal, 30, an economic historian, who participated in the protests and lives nearby. Recently he couldn’t find a place to get his keys copied. “It was absolutely impossible – they’ve all been driven out by the souvenir shops and specialty coffee places. Overtourism destroys the fabric of a neighbourhood.”
Perhaps no institution represents the change to that fabric better than the Ramblas’ Boqueria market, once considered among the greatest in the world. These days, instead of providing mainly families or chefs with raw ingredients, the stalls cater to tourists with prepared foods: fishmongers sell cones of fried shrimp alongside filets of monkfish; poultry vendors shelve pre-baked empanadas next to eggs.
Yolanda Serrano, a butcher, runs one of the few stalls that still sell only raw ingredients. “Tourism has taken this market from us. Our customers can’t come here anymore because they can’t get through with their carts. But I’m a butcher, I don’t want to sell crappy empanadillas.” She is thinking about moving her shop to a street near the less touristy Sant Antoni market.
Pinotxo, until recently the Boqueria’s most well-known bar, has already made the move. The owner, Jordi Asín, couldn’t be happier. “At the Boqueria, excess tourism really changed the kind of business we could do,” he said. “Here, we still get tourists, but they’re the gastronomic ones who come because they know of our cooking. And there are a lot more locals, so it’s a much better balance.”
With its vivid mosaics and undulating terraces, Parc Güell, designed by the architect Antoni Gaudí, is a tourist magnet, so popular that the attraction recently closed its on-site ticket office and now requires visitors to book online.
On a prominent hill in the Gracia neighbourhood, Parc Güell is not easy to reach; even the nearest metro stations require a steep walk up or downhill. There is, however, one form of public transportation that helps residents navigate the hills: a minibus that stops at the park’s entrance. “But it had become so jammed with tourists that the city government asked Google to remove it from its maps,” said Artur Paz, who, with his son, was among a handful of passengers on a Saturday afternoon. “Now it’s ours again.”
Overtourism pressures communities in many ways. Paz’s son attends school inside the park, and he says that many parents are so fed up with the crowds that they sometimes ram tourists with their bikes. He thinks that kind of animosity is unwarranted. “We’re all tourists sometimes,” he said. “If I travel to New York and am sitting in an outdoor cafe, I wouldn’t want someone coming at me with a water gun.”
On a Sunday morning, thousands of passengers had spilled from five massive cruise ships docked just outside the city centre. Most summer mornings see the arrival of several ships, but Sundays are especially bad: as many as 25,000 passengers pour into the city in the span of a few hours.
To diminish their impact, the city recently moved the cruise terminals from the base of the Ramblas a bit farther south. But most passengers board buses that take them to the Ramblas. And many, like the 5500 who arrived that morning on the MSC Virtuosa, stay only for the day, putting a lot of social and environmental pressure on the city without spending much.
Kieran and Corinne George and their four kids had boarded the MSC Virtuosa eight days earlier in England, and didn’t have plans for their 10 hours in Barcelona. On the bus to the Ramblas, they were surprised to hear that the city wanted to reduce day trips like theirs. “Are they saying they don’t want families to come?” Kieran George asked.
According to the deputy mayor, Valls, the city will soon charge higher fees for ships that dock only for a day. It’s part of a plan to attract “higher quality” tourism, he said. “We want visitors who really value what they find in Barcelona, its culture, its concerts, its urban design, its architecture.”
And its America’s Cup. According to the tourism authority’s Hernández, the event appeals to the focused, higher-spending tourists the city wants. “The person who comes because they like sailing — that’s the profile of someone who adds a lot of value.”
Hosting that event, like the city’s expansion of the airport, suggests to some critics — like Daniel Pardo, whose organisation wants a ban on tourism promotion — that the city isn’t serious about tackling overtourism. “For the government to pretend that they are doing something against the touristification of the city when they continuously decide and publicly defend these kinds of things is completely incoherent.”
Outside Gaudí's famous basilica, it is the usual chaos. Crowds gape, guides shepherd groups around and vendors line the sidewalk. As they waited for their time slot, two tourists from Utah, Cindy Godoy, 21, and Lexiana Casaday, 21, said they had heard about the protests, but they still felt welcomed. “People are so nice!” Godoy said. “But I can imagine there’s a tipping point where you feel like your city isn’t your own anymore.”
Inside, the pews were filled with parishioners and visitors. Although Mass was offered in Catalan, some prayers were in other languages, and an assistant reminded the congregation – in English – that the sacrament was only for baptised Catholics.
Among the residents were Jordi Nicolau and Gloria Belasch, in their 80s, who have been attending Sagrada Familia for years, and had even been married there. Although Belasch admitted that the visitors sometimes make it difficult to navigate the streets, she and her husband welcomed them. “The former priest told us that we have to love the tourists and show them care,” said Nicolau. “So we do.”
With that, the two left the church holding hands, and, while a busker entertained tourists with “Hotel California,” went off to greet their neighbours.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Lisa Abend
Photographs by: Maria Contreras Coll
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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