When you visit the city of Nottingham today you can recreate the emergence of Luddism, a movement that emerged in the early 19th century in manufacturing England in opposition to rampant industrialization and the resulting loss of jobs. The Luddites not only went on strike, but destroyed the first machine that put them in front of them.
This attitude resurfaces today in opposition to the technological revolution. In New York, for example, a year ago the Luddite Club was created, formed by a group of teenagers fed up with the tyranny of the networks and infinite scrolling who met in a park to read paper books while carrying phones from when they didn't yet. smartphones had been invented.
What is less common is that it is an administration that blocks a technology to avoid its unwanted effects. That is why the decision by Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) to hide bus line 116 from tourists in the Google Maps application and to eliminate the promotion of batteries from the Tourist Bus website has had an impact. Carmel anti-aircraft guns.
These are measures that partially meet the demands of residents who are fed up with having to travel in crowded buses and enduring the crowds of bottles overlooking the city. Emergency solutions that can be justified at specific times and that also show the predisposition of the authorities to correct the unwanted effects of mass tourism, but that cannot be contemplated in the long term.
To begin with, because it is very difficult to turn off content from the network without users finding a way to recover it through other means. Furthermore, in the case of the bunkers, the promotion of the enclave has traveled happily on social networks for more than a decade, so it is irrelevant whether or not it is announced on the TMB website: the possibility of flying over a city with The sea as a backdrop will always be worth the trip, whether by bus or on foot.
Secondly, by adopting a measure aimed at conditioning the mobility of a certain group, such as visitors, we are deepening a division that contravenes the increasingly accepted logic that we are all tourists, whether in our own city or in that of others.
Finally, measures such as reducing the promotion of an enclave of such historical value as the ancient cannons of Carmel – where a battle of a Civil War was fought that was actually a prelude to the Second World War – have something incongruous in a city forced to advertise itself through culture as the only alternative to the most predatory tourism. Barcelona being so dependent on the visitor economy.
It is an exaggeration that no one considers, but this same logic taken to the limit would force the Picasso or Macba museum to be turned off so as not to saturate the Gòtic and the Raval with tourism or gentrify.
The tourist pressure is evident and there are more and more residents – in Barcelona and other cities – who, quite rightly, demand corrective measures. And these can be enabled through tight control of tourist apartments and investing in the services that locals and tourists share, so that those do not feel marginalized in their own city.
Increasing the frequency of buses that pass through places of tourist interest or increasing the police force that monitors spaces such as bunkers would be more structural solutions than creating ghost buses or stopping promoting cultural assets. The City Council already compensates part of the inconvenience with investments generated by the tourist tax, but there is still room for this to be increased and better serve its purpose.
As for the anti-aircraft batteries, although it hurts to put doors to the landscape, we should begin to consider a complete musealization like the one that was applied in Park Güell, with an entrance fee and significant discounts for the neighbors.
The historical and sentimental value of the place deserves a level of protection similar to that of the Gaudinian prodigy. And the neighborhood tranquility too.
