Barcelona, ​​​​mass tourism and the protests against foreign visitors

If you’ve visited Barcelona recently, you may have noticed something unusual going on.

Since early summer, central hotspots such as La Rambla and neighborhoods such as Gracia and Parc Guell have seen graffiti with the words ‘Tourists go home’. It’s all part of the same picture. The residents of Barcelona protest against mass tourism.

On July 6, a demonstration took place in which (according to the organizers) between 10,000 and 15,000 people took to the streets (police estimates are around 3,000). Some even targeted individual tourists, spraying them with water guns as they drank coffee or lunch and cordoned off hotels and restaurants with red tape as they “reclaimed” territory for themselves.

It drew international attention to a problem that has been with many residents for years. Now that there is a consolidated movement to raise awareness and take action, Barcelona’s politics and daily life are beginning to reflect this new perspective – and the city’s most famous football club is watching with interest.

Barcelona starts each season with a home match as they compete in the Joan Gamper Trophy. The tradition dates back to the mid-1960s and is a tribute to Gamper, one of the club’s founders in 1899.

The match is always played in early August, which means there are plenty of foreigners among those present. This year, Monaco were the visitors (and they beat Barca 3-0 – although any sore feelings about that result have been forgotten in Barca’s strong start to the new season).

On the route to Barca’s temporary home at Montjuic (they have been playing at the Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys since the start of last season while extensive renovations are being carried out at Camp Nou), departing from Plaza Espana and taking advantage of the escalators that help you reach the stadium, that several tourists spoke to The Athletics about their experiences in the city.

Stuart, a 34-year-old from England, said he felt tourists were being treated “unfairly”. He said he “understood the anger and frustration of residents” but thought it was “a misdirection” because “the problem is with the government and they need to find a solution”.

Another was Giulia, a 34-year-old Italian who has been living in Barcelona for a few years.

“When I first saw the graffiti it made me feel like I wasn’t welcome,” she said. “But I understand that people are angry, because I am too.

“There are always drunk people, normally from England or Germany, shouting without their shirts on. Would you take to the streets in your hometown like that? This isn’t Disneyland. People live here.”

Street graffiti in Barcelona – Guiri is a colloquial term for a poorly behaved or unpleasant tourist (Paco Freire/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Marti Cuso has been involved in organizing the demonstrations through his role with a residents’ association representing Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, a central part of the city that is extremely popular with visitors.

“The responsible party is not the tourist who comes to Barcelona and wants to attend a Barcelona match,” he said. “The responsible party is the entire economic system.

“What we have been denouncing for years is the ‘tourism’ of the economy. Tourism has a very strong negative impact on the lives of residents. It leads to housing shortages with apartments being rented out to holiday rentals, rising prices, degradation of heritage, pollution and the erosion of labor rights. A change must be proposed to reduce the weight of tourism in the city’s economy.

“Flight prices are rising and the low-cost airlines will disappear. What will happen to international mobility if oil becomes scarce in twenty to thirty years? We have a city that depends on 30 million visitors. We must generate economic alternatives and do so in a planned manner.

“The graffiti alone does not help people understand this, although it is true that it has contributed to the mediatization of the problem. But some take it very personally, as if we are attacking them. The least you ask of the tourist is that he knows that there is a conflict, but you should never directly appoint him as responsible.”

Tourists get involved in the July 6 protest in Barcelona (Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images)

Tourism is extremely important for Barca. There are many more reasons to visit Barcelona – for the food, the climate, the architecture, the art and the beaches – but among many who travel here, the world-famous football club is also high on the to-do list.

Barca’s museum is the most visited in Catalonia and the third most visited in Spain. Club sources – who, like all those quoted here, preferred to speak anonymously to protect relationships – told this The Athletics that on average 52 percent of match tickets are sold to people from outside Spain. During their most recent season at Camp Nou (2022–2023), their ticket revenue was €71.6 million (£60.3 million; $79.3 million at current rates), of which €37.3 million came from tickets sold were sold to tourists. All this made the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic particularly destructive.

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The importance of tourism to Barcelona has already caused some tension among the club’s fans. Last season they introduced a new policy that penalized season ticket holders who didn’t release their seats for resale if they couldn’t make it to a game. It did not go down well with some of Barça’s ‘socios’ (club members). For the 2023-2024 campaign, only 17,552 of the 80,274 who had season tickets to Camp Nou decided to take their place at the Lluis Companys.

Protesters in Barcelona – demonstrations have also taken place in other parts of Spain (Paco Freire/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Barcelona City Council has already outlined steps in response to growing pressure on mass tourism.

“Our will and commitment to limit the massive tourist crowd and its consequences for the city are great,” said Mayor Jaume Collboni (of the Spanish Socialist Party) after the demonstration in July.

A month earlier, Collboni spoke of plans to eliminate more than 10,000 short-term vacation rentals, such as those available on Airbnb, and return them to residential use by November 2028. Limiting tour groups to 20 people, increasing the tourist tax surcharge to €4 per night and drawing up a specific plan for managing high-traffic locations, such as the area around the Sagrada Familia, are other measures in the works.

Barca sources say the club is closely monitoring the situation surrounding recent protests. They said they feel affected by negative news that could make a tourist decide not to travel to the city.

Cuso and the residents’ association he represents are skeptical on two points. First, they believe that the measures outlined by local politicians are not far-reaching enough (and they also suggest that some measures may not be feasible, given that the next municipal elections are scheduled for 2027). Secondly, they don’t think the recent protests and graffiti will have any lasting effect on the number of people choosing to come to Barcelona.

“No one is going to stop coming because of four water guns,” Cuso said. “The Spanish and foreign media are generating a discourse of fear and it is something that responds to the desire to discredit the protests and their underlying arguments.”

But he is more concerned about the impact of mass tourism on Barca fans.

Eintracht Frankfurt celebrates victory over Barca in April 2022 (David S. Bustamante/Socrates/Getty Images)

On 14 April 2022, Eintracht Frankfurt visited Barca in the second leg of the Europa League quarter-final. Visiting fans were officially given 5,000 tickets. In the end, around 30,000 supporters from Germany reached the ground – the number in attendance was 79,468.

It caused great embarrassment for Barça. Measures have since been taken to prevent a repeat, such as blocking online ticket sales from foreign IP addresses on European match days, or not allowing rival colors to be worn in sections reserved for home fans.

More recently, speaking before last weekend’s La Liga match between Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao at Montjuic, host manager Ernesto Valverde was asked what kind of atmosphere he expected. He replied: “It’s summer, there will be a lot of tourists, so I don’t expect anything special.”

It’s a point that Cuso associates with the broader trends of too much tourism.

“When you watch a Barcelona match now, every day you have someone different next to you, someone who doesn’t know the chants and who is more interested in taking photos and recording footage for Instagram than in the match itself. This completely depersonalizes the experience and betrays the entire identity of what it was like to go to Camp Nou in the 1990s or 2000s.

“The club has clearly positioned itself as a global brand and is playing this game. But Barça is not a company, even if it behaves like one. They are an exception in the world of football (in that it is one of many owned by its members). Now that in the reform of Camp Nou they are adding more VIP boxes and lounges, which will certainly cost thousands of euros. This is the model that everything is moving towards.”

The new Camp Nou will accommodate 105,000 people. The stadium is not scheduled to be fully completed until the summer of 2026, but Barca are expected to return there before the end of this year with a reduced capacity of 64,00 spectators – although they say they cannot provide an exact time frame to guarantee.

Increased capacity should mean good news for the many thousands of people on the season ticket waiting list, although Barca sources say it has not yet been fully decided how many extra will be made available.

But one idea is to reserve a portion for general ticket sales – again keeping the city’s tourists firmly in mind.

(Top photo: Getty Images. Visual design by Eamonn Dalton)