Thinking of a trip to Barcelona this summer? Beware – here’s what you’ll find | Stephen Burgen
PCountries in Barcelona Water pistols used For consumption to tourists who visit Sagrada Familia last month. Population associations were published in Mallorca Open message Attractive for tourists to stay away from the island. More of these measures is expected in the Canary Islands and Málaga and other places such as Spain’s arches for another huge Crushes season.
Last year, there were nearly 100 million visitors SpainWeak population. No wonder the industry licks its lips and rubbed its hands on the possibility of more this year. But those of us who do not have a share in the commercial caliber of hospitality are preparing ourselves in order to invade with a mixture of awe and resentment. For those in the recipient, group tourism feels more extract to the extent that it is a form of colonialism for companies.
Here in Barcelona, we have long been overwhelmed by a crowded Ramla. We avoid the old city, and we do not bother to go to the beach that was mobilized in Barcelona. We cannot reach the house to Vallcarca because public transportation She overwhelmed tourists Producing to Anthony Godi Park generationOne of the most popular attractions in the city. When there is an urgent need Park has been opened Last month, the council said it hoped to attract tourists. When the area surrounding the dirty Besòs river was cleaned and turned into a refuge of nature, it was described as a tourist attraction.
This marketing engine is unabated in it leaves the residents feel as if our only role is to make the place look more authentic. But the paradox is that the more tourists come, the less authentic Barcelona It becomes. Every day, the city is less similar to itself and more like the idea of the Marketing Department of Barcelona.
Turisme de Barcelona just launched a new campaign under the slogan: This is Barcelona. Many will replace “IS” with “Kan”. With the expulsion of residents and local companies, the city is caught, with traditional bars and shops replaced with tapas bubbles, pizza and gifts stores because no one else can carry high rents. Official figures indicate that store rents in central Barcelona have More than weak Over the past five years.
Just as we feel colonialism, is it not also a product to change greed? What is the new cultural experience that comes from traveling to Barcelona to the waiting list to get the Benedict in a place called Brunch & Cake? Why travel abroad to shop in Zara or Emporio Armani or eat in Taco Bell when you can do it near the house?
Or do people feel comfortable knowing international brands everywhere? It may make them feel more at home, which also raises the question, why travel at all? To the tourist industry, this is not a problem. If people continue to come because they love it. He said enough.
Let’s not be quieter than you, because there are no buyers without sellers and a group of hotel owners, owners of real estate and a compatible local authority, sold the city for several decades from under the feet of its citizens. As the flower seller that his family sold flowers on La Rambla since 1888, he told me: “We have lost everything, but we, the Catalan who sold it.”
Take Barcelona Football Club, often hung as a pioneer of the Catalan nation: Més Que Un Cluband They also like to say. However, go to the match and you are likely to hear the English or French language or a variety of other spoken languages as you are Catalani or Spanish. How is this possible, when every seat is owned by the season ticket holder? Because the fans sell tickets on the match on the tourists in a plan that the club itself facilitates.
And yes, there are jobs and money: 12 % of GDP in Spain, and 14 % of BarcelonaIt comes from tourism, tens of thousands of jobs, and many of them are paid and risks, but jobs with that. Knejerk Riposte of anyone complaining about a feeling of fatigue from group tourism is: right, so you want to put thousands of people at work, right?
During nearly 25 years, I lived in Barcelona, every mayor pledged to control tourism and put quality higher than the quantity. Whether it means that or not, the numbers speak for themselves. This is not related to nostalgia. If there is any nostalgia, it would be 20 years ago when we had 10 million visitors to be controlled per year, not 30 million visitors.
Everything has a critical mass and here, as well as in places such as Seville, Mouliaja and Bales, and the feeling is that we have reached it. Hence the number of increasing protests, most of which focused on how tourism made these places unreasonable for its residents.
Whatever the solution, attacking individuals who suffer from water pistols is meaningless and unfair. We all travel, we are all infantry soldiers from colonialism, and in the absence of another or much higher pandemic, it is difficult to see the situation changes, especially since it does not dare the Spanish, regional or national government to obstruct the tourist broth train.
It may be due to each of us to become more aware of the social and environmental influence of this continuous tour, and ask ourselves what we hope to find in a world in which the mass tourism everywhere feel the same.
At Stephen Sondheim Music Company, there is a function:
Where do you go?
Barcelona.
Do you have?
Yes, I must.
We may need to ask ourselves: Are we?
