The residents of Cabanyal, one of the most emblematic fishing neighborhoods in Valencia, have been worried for months about how many tourists visit them. That is why their neighborhood association created a table on tourist apartments last January, because they observe problems in the neighborhood, they notice a difficulty in the survival of traditional commerce and the effects on the price of rental housing are already more than evident.
Neighborhood businesses such as nursery schools are aware of both phenomena, which are also perceiving the tourist phenomenon due to the changing profile of their students. At the El Caragol preschool, in the heart of the neighborhood, its director explains that they also notice it. Located in the neighborhood for 27 years, they detail how the touristification that is talked about so much outside is also noticeable inside.
The person in charge explains that in her same building there are already three tourist apartments and she knows of some families who have had to leave the neighborhood because they could not afford the housing prices. “If those homes belonged to people from the neighborhood, it would be different… Between the fact that the birth rate is decreasing and the profile of the neighborhood is changing, we have fewer students,” explains the person in charge of it. “The luck is that the bass is mine, that I bought it when I opened, because otherwise there comes a time when I wouldn't be able to continue,” she says.
The effect of teleworking, the pull of Valencia as a habitable paradise where digital nomads find comfort and good positions in the lists of tourist destinations are also perceived among diapers and toys. Students who spend short periods of time enter El Caragol, children with stays of three or four months, whose parents are passing through the city for work.
This is also reflected in the Saint Timothy Infant School, where they report that in recent years "the profile has changed a lot." “We have students of all nationalities, especially since the pandemic we have been noticing it.” Couples in which one of the two is a foreigner, “or even couples of foreigners,” are increasingly common.
The same situation is explained at the Alma Montessori nursery school in the neighborhood. Its manager says that “it is true that we have many long-stay foreign families and some short-stay ones, because the fathers and mothers telework or bring them to us only for a season. It is something that has been happening for years,” they explain. Likewise, they consider at the center that the claim of the Montessori philosophy that invades their classrooms is also an attraction for the international public.
However, some of the centers explain that there is less demand in the neighborhood due to the drop in the child population, but nevertheless the supply continues to grow... and more than ever, because the Valencia City Council is building the new children's school in the Cabanyal-Canyamelar. The center, which will provide 75 school places for girls and boys from 0 to 3 years old, is expected to open its doors next year. A new opportunity that is also seen as a threat to private centers.
In fact, a few months ago the Salvem 0-3 platform proposed to the City Council that it study the change of use for some other deficient service in the area, suggesting that it become, for example, an early care center, "taking into account the needs that "We detect in our students annually and that they would require this service."
The letter, which was circulated through the neighborhood's nursery schools, pointed out that its effect was already being noticed in the other two-year schools and classrooms of the area's schools, and alleged that the Cabanyal neighborhood already has "sufficient centers and authorized places 0-3 to cover the demand needs of families and, therefore, the opening of a new center would not provide any improvement to families in the area as there is sufficient supply.”
