Said Daniel Pardo, 48, co-founder of the Assembly of Neighborhoods for Tourism Degrowth, quoted in "'The Demand Is Unstoppable': Can Barcelona Survive Mass Tourism? This summer, thousands of local protesters in the Spanish city denounced overtourism. With more crowds expected for the America’s Cup, we visited the areas where tensions are highest" (NYT).
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 neighborhoods into what locals refer to as “theme parks.”...
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.”...
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I read that as Don Pardo. (laugh) I will never ever visit Europe in the Summer or over Christmas. Crowds are horrible things.
She: It's like you say that we're going to Spain, but have I ever been to Barcelona?
He: Barthalona.
She: No, we are not going to Barthelona, okay? We have discussed going to Barthelona, but we are never going to go to Barthelona.
He: Not with an attitude like that.
I can’t see who the NYT ‘we’ is what got the expense paid trip to Europe in the Summertime. Normally that’s a freeload only government employees are entitled to receive…then again…
Barcelona is a frequent starting point or ending point for Mediterranean cruises, and huge cruise ships dump thousands of tourists into a city at a time. Tourists bring jobs and money into a city, and that is a good thing. But there is a cost.
Chuckled at the Don Pardo reference. Name from game show past, I believe.
Yes, deposit your money into this box and GTF outta here ! *jerks thumb*
I hope they're being careful what they wish for. I suppose they could try to control the influx of tourists - basically put a cap on admission - but doesn't that turn them into even more of a theme park?
Another thing they could do is just be really, really unpleasant to tourists, but that hasn't worked in Paris so far.
Which only leaves importing an overwhelming number of unassimilated people of a radically different culture, some number of whom will do things that will make tourists feel insecure enough to stay away. THAT seems to be moving the needle.
(Actually, the solution is exactly what's happening - the market at work. When it gets too expensive, demand will fall, no matter how culturally important the Sagrada Familia is. And current residents can elect to move, too. Living in a beautiful or culturally important place comes with a cost.)
The double-edged scalpel of a tourist economy.
I learnt to read in Spanish a year before English, and don't remember a time when I did *not* speak the language. Here's how you can tell if an area in eastern Spain is "touristy" or not -- if you have to PAY for 'tapas' [assorted small, delicious snacks] in a bar, it's a tourist joint. No me interesa. Punto final.
Europe is loveliest in early October or maybe late April. And at out of the way places where a boat or an airplane can't dump you off. Using Florida as an example - Orlando is horrible at any time of the year. Fernandina is delightful.
when they turn Sagrada Familia into a mosque, then they'll wonder where things went wrong, remember they tried to blow it up in 2017
the Qataris who own the Barcelona team will make sure of that,
Was it Yogi who said, "This place would be more popular if it wasn't so crowded"? I went to Barcelona seven years ago and found it to be delightful,. But the people I travel with tend to go to places just outside of "tourist season". And there are thousands of charming, exciting (fill in the blank) places not yet over run. Life is short, go find an adventure.
Barcelona is sort of like Portland was about 15 years ago. It's uber-hip with a youngish population from all over Europe and like such populations they tend to have a draw-bridge mentality; once they get there want to keep everyone else out. This is their "Keep Portland weird" phase, but being Spanish and pretty direct it comes out as "Fuck off and go away!".
Let’s all gather in Spain to protest the crowds… f’ing morons
I find Madrid to be a more interesting and pleasant city than Barcelona, and friendlier too.
One could move if they no longer like where they live?
"or chat calmly with your neighbors on the street. "
Not during lockdowns, you couldn't
Exactly. I heard that Minnesotans tried to recover spaces for the things they liked to do prior to tourism - you know, sit on their porches, walk in their yards without a mask, burn and loot the small businesses run by and employing their neighbors - but Walz had his shock troops shoot them with paintball guns to put it to a stop (well, the sitting on porches and walking in their yards, anyhow).
Off to Porto in October, with hopes that it won't be crowded with people like me.
I don't want to eat a crappy empanada, or really any empanada, so that guy could up his game.
There is a difference traveling to strange places and enjoying whatever those areas have to offer and being a tourist. Just was an easy lesson learned growing up in Los Angeles during the '60s and '70s. And that environment of unlimited possibilities you could carve out slices of vacation throughout every day. When you travel to new areas with that sort of attitude you learn how to carve out vacation activities elsewhere like the like-minded locals do. I can completely understand the revulsion to the onslaught the hordes of Taurus unthinking unimaginative consumers of kitsch and simpleton trinket purchases.
A cruise vacation, anywhere in the world, is now the choice for many American tourists. Royal Caribbean stock is up 166% over the last two years. They recently closed a deal for a new cruise terminal in Seward, Alaska. I predict continued, rapid growth for this tourist industry.
What are all them thar Span-yards complaining about? They uns is making money aint they? And that all that matters, makin' money. Why I'd shoot Grandma, if you paid me enough. 'cause that 'murica.
The obvious solution is simply impose a numbers cap on how tourists can visit the city on any day. Course that wont be the "Free market" aka wont let greedheads destroy the quality of life in order make more $$. But Spain doesn't believe in the "Free market". Them thar furriners are socialists.
BTW, i would love to go back to Europe with the wife and enjoy the sights. And Spain is a fantastic country. But I would never go in the Summer. And most people i know feel the same way. As Yogi Berra said: "No one goes there anymore, its too crowded".
Forget masses of tourist spending money. How about masses of Muslims taking money from the community chest?
Here is Austin when the upgefucht mayor immediately imposed a 100% lockdown on all citizenry, I immediately decided to hell with him, to hell with that, and I was going to continue working on my construction project. Driving down I-35 and MOPAC in the days, weeks and months that followed were a commuting dream, with speeds of whatever the hell I felt like driving, almost no other traffic and not a radar monitoring policeman to be seen for about 3 years straight. I for one will remember the pandemic as a time of the best commuting I ever experienced.
Oh! The America's Cup is this week!
Now, if I can only figure out how to watch it on this Hulu thingie.
My bad. It's in October.
The mistake the Europeans made was building all of those beautiful buildings. Even today they persist in completing Sagrada Familia. We are smarter than that and build nothing of beauty anymore. We put all our beauty out in the desert somewhere so that it doesn't bother anyone and cover San Francisco with tents and human feces. Smart.
Barcelona is not "Spanish", it's Catalonian. Spanish may be the official language of business, but Catalonians resent having to speak it, and most Castellans look at Catalonians as traitors because of the separatist movement. Personally, I'd rather visit almost any other city in Spain, primarily because of the large Gipsy population that preys on tourists there. The last time the wife and I were there three gypsies working in concert attempted to pick my pocket when I was coming up an escalator out of the subway - one pretending to fumble with picking up a lighter at the very top, one immediately behind me and one behind him. As the gypsy at the top fumbled around, the people on the escalator became more and more packed together which is when the one behind me tried to get his hand in my front pocket where my wallet was. I felt the hand, grabbed it and started to hit him when he pulled away and pushed his way down the escalator. No one was more surprised than the third gypsy who was left holding the bag his partner was supposed to drop the wallet into. I grabbed at him, but he pushed his way past and followed the first runner down the escalator. The very next evening my wife and I were heading to the hotel after dinner (brightly lit, relatively crowded sidewalk,) when two thieves cut the strap on my wife's shoulder bag and attempted to take off down an alley with it. Fortunately, my wife was holding on the bag itself, so the attempted theft turned into a tug of war with my wife until I smacked him in the back of the head, whereupon he let go of the bag and ran down the alley. He got nothing either, but we were alert and also lucky. I'd like to point out that of the dozens of trips we've made to Europe over the last 30 years we were never targets of criminals. The gypsies specifically target tourists, particularly Americans (and they can tell Americans a mile away) because they know their marks won't be around to testify against them in court, so they get away with it. In Europe (we lived in Spain for five years) Barcelona is known as a den of thieves. We never went back, but we did fly into the airport a couple of times enroute to other locals. The pickpockets and muggers are so bad that the cab drivers warn tourists about them on the way into town from the airport. It's a pretty city but not worth putting up with the crime.
In my travels, I have always found it easy to avoid tourist areas--you might have to give up seeing the things in the tourist guide, but there is just as much cool stuff not in the guide. All you're really giving up are the crowds.
And sure, there are places the locals can't go because of the tourists, but I've lived in tourist cities and it was never a big deal. Why would a New Yorker even WANT to go to Times Square? Unless I'm playing tour guide to visiting family members, I don't go to those neighborhoods and I don't care. It's not a sacrifice to avoid them.
Yes, that sounded like someone whose income is not dependent on tourists. The Venetians hate Germans because the Germans come on huge buses in which they sleep at night and they don't buy anything. Just crowd the narrow streets.
Boy do I miss LA in the 60s and 70s.
Even when I was a teen and thought I liked it, I never watched it. Was there someone named Dennis Conner?
@jaydub My father got his pocket picked on the stairs at a train station in Slovakia the exact same way. Months later I thwarted an attempt to do the same to a friend of mine as she was boarding a train. The Gypsies threatened to kill me as they were running away.
As for Barcelona, it was probably my least favorite city in Spain largely because of the crowds, but also the mismatch between expectations and reality. Yes, I realize I'm part of the problem.
Toledo was fantastic. It was crowded too because of the Corpus Christi Festival, but it was a great cultural experience.
Someone decided to double European prices for natural gas for them without asking, forcing deindustrialization on them,so what does Europe have as its most abundant resource? Tourist attractions.
imTay,
"somebody"? That's a very strange way to spell 'Victoria Nuland"
I thwarted a couple of Paris pickpockets in 2017. We were in Montmartre looking for a place to eat lunch and turned down a smaller side street that
was almost empty of people. I had already noticed two dapper young fellows at the corner, and saw one make a head-gesture to the other.
They looked like locals to me, FWIW--not Roma or obvious immigrants.
My wife strode ahead unaware of anything, and I was a step directly behind her, when Thing 1 tossed a smartphone at my feet. I just stepped over and kept going, and Thing 2 dropped a big shiny coin and bent in front of me to pick it up.
I would like to say that I gave him a big kick in the ass as I stepped around him, but all I did as we walked away was gesture at them and curse them in bad French.
Our money and docs were secure on my chest; my wife was carrying a tiny handbag with nothing much in it. She had no idea what had happened, which is good, because she would have stopped.
It was a little insulting, really, such obvious ploys in an obvious place.
We did find a tiny cafe where we had a fine light lunch.
I'd go back to Paris any time (except summer and/or Olympics).
October in Venice is beautiful. April in Paris is cold and wet.
We found a similar thing in Rome.
"if you have to PAY for 'tapas' [assorted small, delicious snacks] in a bar, it's a tourist joint." In Madrid, I repeatedly saw the jamon under the heat lamp being carved..kept receiving green olives.
Porto is always pretty full of tourists, but October will be better than summer. It's a lovely city to visit any time of the year in my opinion.
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