My Barcelona is being destroyed by mass tourism — but kicking visitors out isn’t the answer
A protest against mass tourism in Barcelona last month, where some participants used water pistols to spray tourists sitting in a restaurant. Picture: Adrià Puig/Anadolu/Getty
My city has been stolen from me and I’m not getting it back. In Barcelona, we are overwhelmed by mass tourism and there is no solution in sight. Our vulnerability as citizens is mirrored by the experience of people who live in other European tourist hotspots: Rome, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris or Prague, where measures to curb tourism’s toxicity have been put in place with varying degrees of success.
In Barcelona, it is clear efforts such as noise restrictions and one-way systems in popular areas are not working, and this is why a grassroots backlash is taking hold. The city has about 32 million visitors annually.
