If the Boqueria market is the pristine shop window, the Gardunya square, located at the opposite end of the Rambla, would be the back room in the truest sense of the term: the broom room that does not have to be tidy. This square, in the backstage of one of the most Instagrammed stages on the planet, is a place where the degradation of the city center is evident, aggravated by the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of visitors.
The bins overflow with rubbish at peak times, when local and foreign families who visit the square have to live with the remains of nights typical of darker times, such as hypodermic syringes. The presence of the remodeled Escola Massana in the square has helped to contain the deterioration of the environment, but more could probably be done from this training center for artists and designers to recover this public space, which is also a neighbor of the Barcelona Institute of Culture. (ICUB), in the Viceroyalty.
A neighborhood initiative promoted by the Bacaro restaurant on Jerusalem street, called Urban Pádel Boqueria, which would consist of organizing a ten-day championship of this sport in Gardunya, is still awaiting a response from the City Council. The objective is to promote the spirit of the neighborhood with participatory events. According to Alfredo Rodolfi, co-founder of Bacaro, the future tournament, presented to the Consistory three months ago, already has sponsors and a collaboration with La Boqueria would be established.
The imminence of a tourist summer that may exceed even the pre-pandemic influx has set off alarms. At the same time, extreme trends are accentuating: tourism-phobia emerges with renewed force, both in the discourse of the city and in street graffiti and, on the other hand, bets on low-cost tourism proliferate, from the busted tourist packages of price to the indiscriminate offer of street concoctions of dubious potability.
This low cost model would be to the city what the Shein phenomenon is to the textile industry, the Chinese manufacturer that bursts prices by ignoring the labor rights of its staff and the most basic environmental regulations.
However, it is difficult to tune in to certain anti-tourism discourses without taking into account that today, as these lines are being read, Catalan may well be among the most widely spoken languages in Piazza San Marco in Venice, in Piazza Signoria in Florence or in the Bairro Alto of Lisbon.
It is clear that Barcelona is not an isolated case of a city at risk of being distorted by the avalanche of tourists, although it is probably one of the most reluctant when it comes to betting unapologetically on a vibrant cultural offer that conditions (in the long term) the type of visitors you receive.
In any case, it is convenient to differentiate between two types of critical attitude towards tourism. On the one hand, there are the behaviors that fit perfectly into the tourismophobia neologism, such as that of the brainless person who painted the phrase “Tourists go home” on a wall in Santa Maria del Mar. not), we will have to pay attention to which political candidacy encourages tourism-phobia in the municipal campaign.
And, on the other hand, there are those who, from common sense, ask for control measures and shock investments in public transport, security or garbage collection in the most exposed neighborhoods, necessary measures to guarantee neighborhood coexistence.
Indeed, it would be advisable to limit the cruises that do not spend the night in Barcelona, which are the ones that saturate the center with anxious visitors and harm, above all, quality tourists (those who respect the city they visit). Also pedicabs, which expel cyclists from the bike lane.
But, beyond these measures promoted by the City Council, a discourse is required in which criticism of the excesses of tourism converge with the admission that Barcelona will always be a city dependent, to a greater or lesser degree, on the money they contribute your visitors. To the same extent that the people of Barcelona contribute to the wealth of other tourist destinations beyond their municipal area.
