Barcelona pushes cruise ships out of city centre

While I understand communities struggling to deal with the influx of tourists, I wonder how big the impact of this move will actually be. It is the difference between passengers walking out from their ships at will or being deposited in the same location in groups of 50 by shuttle buses. There will still be the same number of people arriving.

I think the change will mostly be psychological. People won’t see the cruise ships as readily and the community can feel like it has “done something.”

Pretty much gesture politics. That is just less than one cruise ship per day. And the really big ships couldn't berth at the World Trade Centre anyway. Still another half a dozen per day coming in.
Meanwhile there will be no bus movements to bring people in from the Moll d'Adossat.

When I was last there our shuttle bus dropped us off at the WTC anyway! My line ran their own shuttle because they reckoned the port bus couldn't cope with numbers, on a day when not all berths were full. And our shuttle was free, compared to the paid for port bus.

BBC News said it was partly to reduce pollution- so moving the ship a bit further out and running more buses achieves that exactly how?

You're right in pointing out that the net number of visitors doesn't change with the shift in docking location. However, their distribution will change from unloading everyone all at once right in the centre of the old town to a more staggered distribution as cruise ship tourists will make the now 30 minute trip to the old town at their own leisure and pace. That's the hope at least :)

Unless the ships spend an extra hour at the dock, which seems unlikely given the tax increase that is planned, it seems 'wishful' to think the passengers will be inclined to waste an extra hour commuting from/to the ship.

I see more buses and cabs in use, rather than passengers 'strolling' for 30 minutes (each way) to their desired destination.

Carlos, let us know how the vote goes and if enacted how close to the 'theory' the reality turns out to be.

It's the first step on a long road to taking back Barcelona from overtourism, it's nice to see that the new mayor is a little more serious then previous one about tackling the issue, she had been in power for almost a decade without much to show imo.

"it's nice to see that the new mayor is a little more serious then previous one about tackling the issue, she had been in power for almost a decade without much to show imo." AND, do not forget, Collboni — the current mayor — was the previous mayor's loyal lieutenant.

I wouldn't describe him as a loyal lieutenant considering he's from a different party, and was just acting as the deputy major as part of the coalition with Colau's party.

It's not just pushing the ships out, there are also a number of other measures being taken, such as the increase of the fee for mooring or the limitation of concurrent ships on the same day.

Other cities are going the same way: Amsterdam is banning cruise ships altogether from entering the city centre, from 2024 Venice is imposing a flat fee on all visitors to the city, Paris recently unveiled a plan "to control the influx of tourists that endangers nature, local communities, and tourist experiences", Athens is limiting the daily number of visitors to the Acropolis and other historical sites...

Not only is it a matter of pollution (by the ships), but also the increase in the overall number of total visitors to these destinations, by cruise ship and other means, that is irremediably suffocating the life of the locals in a number of ways many unaware visitors wouldn't suspect. These days, in these popular destinations the keyword is "regulating" -aka curbing these numbers- by many means so as to decrease the number of "concurrent" visitors at any given moment.

Barcelona, alongside the restrictions and new regulations on cruise ships, has already been implementing a number of other policies in different fields for a number of years, such as freezing the number of licences for new tourist apartments, regulating the use of Segways and alike in the city centre, limiting the maximum size of the guided-tours, etc. Some do work, others not so much.

Interesting read, as this will effect me immediately, because my friends and I finish a cruise in Barcelona on October 22. I'm not an avid cruiser, but I do understand the impact cruise ships have on cities and ports. When I visited Ponta Delgada Azores this spring, they were dealing with the same situation, hoards of people coming off of multiple cruise ships on a daily basis. I was talking with a local and asking about the impacts, and how the locals viewed the cruise industry. He said that the city was trying to push out the cruise lines completely, they expected to do it within the next few years. But, instead of people, his concerns were more geared toward things associated with the logistics of the cruise industry, such as trash and refueling and the pollution consequences of both.