The setback of Unesco to Venice should be read as a serious warning to all tourist cities, whether or not they are world heritage sites. Barcelona also has reasons to consider itself veiledly alluded to by criticism of an overcrowding that ruins the tourist experience.
All things considered, Barcelona could use an external inspection of this caliber. If the entire city were a World Heritage Site and its condition was threatened, perhaps changes would be promoted that sometimes go beyond the municipal sphere. For example, the limitation of cruises that only spend a few hours in the city. Or structural reforms to better control the tourist rental.
But is not the case. The city bursts with tourists at the seams and, now, there are even virtual visitors, such as the influencer Lil Miquela, an animated character who last week posted on Instagram (2.7 million followers) some photos in which she appears visiting the Boqueria and that they were a clear invitation to take the first flight to Barcelona. In the same network, the writer Jordi Carrión warned about her presence: "As there are not enough millions of tourists, Lil Miquela announces the future invasion of digital people and robots."
Today, Barcelona projects an image of a saturated city, to the point that the phrase “at this rate we are going to end up like Barcelona” is beginning to be heard relatively frequently in smaller cities. A warning that, formulated from some cities with voracious tourist development, arouses some perplexity, because in fact they are already worse off than Barcelona, given that due to its size the overcrowding is even more evident.
And what can Barcelona do to stop looking like that saturated Barcelona, but without giving up tourism, which today is its main source of income?
The Unesco report on Venice points to two problems: overcrowding and the effects of warming. In the first area, Barcelona's margin is limited: few cities in the world of its size have 5 kilometers of safe and well-kept beach in the heart of the city.
Ancient and contemporary culture, architecture and design, gastronomy, good weather and a good atmosphere complete a dangerously attractive offer. Perhaps, first, it will be necessary to hit the ceiling (the new municipal economic manager, Jordi Valls, admits that that moment may have arrived) so that it is the sector itself that regulates itself and bets on quality to the detriment of quantity.
But beware. Although good weather is also included in the previous list, there are indications that Barcelona's weather may stop being an advantage and become a liability.
Although the climatic reasons for which Unesco criticizes Venice (the poor protection of the lagoon) do not concern other cities, some destinations in southern Europe would do well to take note. Because heat, drought and fire are a real threat to the future of tourism. Now that some foreign press, such as the British (from The Sun to the Financial Times) is beginning to warn that the Spanish summer is no longer healthy due to its African temperatures, it will be necessary to launch messages explaining what is being done to combat the problem.
And Barcelona is better positioned than other cities to explain itself. From the outset, it would be necessary to continue advancing, without haste but with determination, in the policies of respectful mobility with the environment, which the city has been applying for years. Increasing urban vegetation, covering streets with panels, promoting architecture adapted to the new reality, improving the network of climate shelters or enabling solutions so that there are no queues outdoors, are other measures to apply.
Barcelona is easy to differentiate, now that cities governed by PP-Vox on the ground are no longer aware of the cut of greenhouse emissions, as they have incorporated climate denialism into their particular cultural war.
