Tasteless tourism threatens image of beautiful Barcelona

MADRID - Catalonia is planning a summer crackdown on rowdy visitors from northern Europe, alarmed that Barcelona's architectural landmarks and Costa Brava resorts are gaining an unsavoury reputation as "booze and babes" playgrounds.

Barcelona, long a magnet for Europeans for its beauty, its cuisine and its free-and-easy Mediterranean lifestyle, has become a favourite destination for hard-drinking stag and hen-night crowds and graduation parties.

Last summer British, German and Dutch tourists invaded Catalonia's beach resorts and handsome urban squares, and outraged locals with their noisy, all-night partying, promiscuity and vomiting in Gothic passageways and Art Nouveau doorsteps.

Given the clattering air conditioning of hotel rooms, local residents complained they couldn't sleep without double glazing; and that their streets were filthy with waste of all kinds.

The authorities, who had long encouraged down-market mass tourism and a tolerant attitude, have had enough. Barcelona and the Catalan regional government have drawn up a battery of measures to stamp out anti-social - or "uncivil" - behaviour.

First targets are the countless unofficial websites for cheap resorts that promise booze, wild parties and "cool chicks", to those who get themselves on a flight from, say, Liverpool to Gerona, near Barcelona, for €10 ($20).

"We can't allow our region to turn into a human rubbish tip for everyone not wanted by other European countries," said tourism spokesman Xavier Guitart. "We are not prepared to prostitute our region."

The Catalan government is to crack down on dozens of websites containing "illegal" ads. The region's Interior Minister, Montserrat Tura, knows it will be difficult to act against foreign advertisers, often private individuals seeking to organise cheap group visits.

Her solution to ask Europol to help fight unscrupulous online organisers seems already to have had an effect. Many such sites have gone blank.

In addition, the authorities have banned street vendors, jugglers, bongo-drummers, windscreen-cleaners, beggars, clients soliciting prostitutes in the street and anyone drinking in public squares, dressed indecorously, or urinating in public.

The region's police will impose fines from €300 to €1500, preferably in cash, on the spot. Likely targets are backpackers who treat the historic Plaza Reial as an open air youth hostel, and bands of camper van travellers.

Barcelona's mayor Joan Clos said tackling louts was a "priority", as the tourist season approaches.

The city wants to attract a better class of visitor by reasserting the cultural appeal of its maritime boulevards, Gaudi buildings and world-class museums, and remind Europe's party animals that Catalonia, for all its exuberance, always did have its austere side.

- INDEPENDENT