Myia McQuilter could barely contain herself as she approached the cruise ship terminal in Barcelona and saw the giant Virgin Voyages ship waiting to take her, her mother and close to 3,000 other passengers on a seven-day trip around the Mediterranean.
“I am so excited,” she said before asking her mother, Donna, to take a picture. “I literally cannot wait.”
Ms. McQuilter, a 21-year-old student from England, is a cruise fanatic and this was her 11th voyage. She’s also worked in the travel industry in Britain and she’s studying tourism management at Leeds University.
She and her mom had been in Barcelona for a few days and they’d noticed some anti-tourism graffiti and heard complaints about the number of cruise ships that dock in the city, which topped 800 last year.
“There’s always that misconception about cruises and people saying ‘Oh, they’re bad.’ And obviously a lot of people hate it,” she said. “But I think cruises are great. Yeah, absolutely amazing.”
As she spoke, dozens of passengers were lining up for buses to take them to Barcelona’s main attractions where throngs of visitors were already packed into Sagrada Familia, Park Güell and on La Rambla.
‘I think cruise ships are great,’ says Myia McQuilter, a British tourism-management student who is in Barcelona on a Mediterranean tour with her mother, Donna, at right.
A sign in Barcelona's busy Raval district blames tourists for depriving locals of a place to live, but says 'neighbourhoods don't give up.'
This has been a summer unlike any other for tourism in Barcelona and across Europe. Several countries have received record numbers of tourists as travellers make up for lost time during the pandemic. And resentment among residents has been boiling over.
Signs telling tourists to “go home” have become commonplace in Barcelona and there have been anti-tourism protests across Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and elsewhere.
The Catalan capital has been the epicentre of the debate and the city is facing another flashpoint as it plays host to the America’s Cup.
City officials say the sailing regatta, which started in August and finishes at the end of October, will bring in 2.5 million tourists and generate more than €1-billion in revenue, or $1.5-billion. But local activists argue the race is costing the city almost as much to stage and provides few benefits for local residents.
The America’s Cup is held every three or four years and it’s unlike any other sporting event. The entry fee alone is US$2.5-million and it’s not uncommon for teams to spend up to US$100-million designing and building their boats. The fan base also skews toward the wealthy.
The main sponsor for the Barcelona edition of the race is fashion brand Louis Vuitton. Other corporate backers include luxury brands Prada, Omega, L’Oréal and Pirelli. Organizers have built flashy pavilions in Port Vell for each of the teams – from the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland and New Zealand – and they’ve opened a hospitality venue that charges up to €1,100 a day for admittance.
All that money and glamour hasn’t sat well with many residents of Ciutat Vella, a collection of historic neighbourhoods adjacent to Port Vell. Blue stickers and flags have popped up on doorways and balconies bearing the message: “No a la Copa America,” and last week a group of residents formed a human chain on Somorrostro beach, saying they wanted to reclaim it for locals.
Flag-bearing protesters form a human chain at Somorrostro beach on Sept. 7 to oppose the America's Cup.JOSEP LAGO/AFP via Getty Images
“The benefits are always for somebody else,” said Dani de los Cobos, a trade union activist who is part of the “No a la Copa America” campaign. Mr. de los Cobos said the area’s rich history as a fishing village has been lost to over-tourism and well-heeled outsiders who have snapped up properties and pushed out locals. Dozens of flats have been listed on Airbnb or rented to America’s Cup team members who can pay up to €7,000 a month.
What public services remain have been stretched or neglected. On a recent tour of Barceloneta, in the heart of the old town, local activist Irma Samayoa pointed to an abandoned two-storey building that was once a fishermen’s co-operative. It has been vacant for decades and city officials promised five years ago to turn it into a community centre, but nothing has happened. A long-promised senior’s centre has also yet to materialize.
“Tourism is like this big monster with a lot of different arms,” said Ms. Samayoa.
Officials in Barcelona have long wrestled over how to balance the needs of the city’s 1.6 million residents with the importance of the tourism sector, which accounts for 14 per cent of the economy. Since Barcelona hosted the Olympics in 1992, the number of annual visitors to the region has soared from four million to more than 30 million.
The city council has taken steps to rein in over-tourism. Councillors froze new hotel construction seven years ago and capped the number of Airbnbs at around 10,000. The council also put a limit of 20 people in guided tours and jacked up tourist taxes.
Last spring, Mayor Jaume Collboni vowed to cancel all Airbnb licences by 2028 to free up apartments for housing. Vacation property owners argued that Airbnbs account for barely 1 per cent of the city’s housing stock and they’ve criticized the mayor for failing to increase the supply of homes.
Tourism officials acknowledge the city is close to a breaking point, but they say events like the America’s Cup are the solution. Attracting more visitors for sports matches, performances or exhibitions will boost tourism spending and shift the balance away from day-trippers and weekenders who make up half the tourists.
“We’re not focused on growing. We are focused on increasing quality,” said Mateu Hernández, managing director of the Barcelona Tourism Consortium. The message now is “come for that concert, come for that festival, for that exhibition, for the America’s Cup. Come for a reason and stay for the rest.”
To reflect the new strategy the group has changed its slogan from “Visit Barcelona” to “This is Barcelona.”
Signs in Barcelona encourage peaceful co-existence: 'Be respectful and you'll be respected.'
That approach has done little to quell the anger among residents who took to the streets this summer.
“It’s clear that the view of people on touristification is radicalizing,” said Daniel Pardo, a member of Barcelona’s Assembly of Neighbourhoods for the Decline in Tourism. “People stopped trusting the official mantra of the city council about tourism, which was ‘tourism is good for everyone.’ ”
Part of the hostility stems from the pandemic, he added, when tourism stopped and residents found it refreshing to have the streets, parks and sidewalks to themselves. Now that tourism has come roaring back, people realize what they’ve been missing. Mr. Pardo said there’s a growing realization that Barcelona is too dependent on tourism and that far too many businesses cater only to tourists.
His shop near the Santa Caterina market, called Caixa d’Eines i Feines, stands out amid the souvenir stalls, cafés and chain stores as an example of what’s fading away. It’s a “library of things” where people can borrow everything from tools to furniture, vacuum cleaners and bicycles for a small fee.
“The city’s economy has no future,” Mr. Pardo said. “What’s the sense of a city void of its people? Is it just a theatre for people to come and watch? I don’t think that’s a city.”
Neighbourhood activist Daniel Pardo runs a store called Caixa d’Eines i Feines, or 'library of things,' that caters to locals who need tools and household items.
Like Mr. Pardo, John Roca has thought long and hard about how Barcelona has changed.
He grew up here and remembers Port Vell as a dirty place that few residents dared visit. “It was only for fishermen and it was forgotten. And now our neighbourhoods are attractive,” he said as he watched the America’s Cup on a giant television screen in a fan zone.
He thinks the race will be good for the city but he’s worried that Barcelona is reaching a tipping point. There are no easy solutions, he said. “If the tourism increases a lot, either the city is for tourists or for people who live here.”
Mr. Roca then headed off toward La Rambla, which was full of tourists. On a side street, a store had shut its doors for the day. The owner had put a sign in the window with a message in English: “Stop tourism pigs. Respect the neighbourhoods.”
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