"Barcelona's New Manager: 'Not One Tourist More"'--NYT Interview

I gifted the article so those who are interested can read it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/travel/barcelona-overtourism-jose-antonio-donaire.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xVA.Z4s7.OH4EG6W1n7MP&smid=url-share

Don't go to Barcelona is my feeling. There are plenty of other places to go to. If they don't want me, I can find a lot of other places to go to.

And they are going to limit cruise ships because cruise ship passengers don't spend enough.

There are smaller ports that welcome cruise ship passengers and are glad for the money that cruise ships bring in. Let's port at those ports.

Furthermore I do not want to be seen in dollars or euros. I want the locals to be glad to see me and want to introduce me to their culture and land. I want them to want to meet me.

Barcelona like many other places marketed itself and has been very successful in doing so. They have been so successful that now they want us not to come. Too many came.

And possibly, Barcelona is blaming its social problems on over tourism.

They should try a "Stay Away Campaign." And if successfull they can then see what happens if tourists stop coming.

Don't go to Barcelona is my feeling. There are plenty of other places to go to.

As a local of Barcelona I agree with this 100%, there are so many other places to go in Spain that are just as interesting and not as impacted by overtourism.

However the tourists who do make the most trouble for the city without much benefit are not the ones who are on this travel forum. If your reading this the New York times article in question is not about you.

I appreciate the post and the link. At least it's a first person citizen account. I will not begin to pretend that I have enough knowledge to be critical or to offer suggestions. They have a fairly healthy democracy and only they have the ability and right to prioritize their values, desires and economics. I wish them luck and if I should chose to visit, i will happily conform with what ever they decide.

The first step, in my opinion, is to get rid of AirB&B, Vrbo, etc. These platforms are taking residential Apartments or even houses, off the market for locals and are driving the costs up.

I read the article and don't feel like they are saying "don't come, tourists", but feel they are trying to make space for Barcelona citizens to be able to also enjoy their city. It sounds like a well thought out plan to me. I certainly agree there need to be fewer cruise ship day trippers. I remember a trip to St. Maarten years ago where I was talking to the owner of a jewelry shop and he told me not to come at certain times/certain days as the little village was packed with folks from the cruise ships. He also told me where to find the newspaper listing about what cruise ships were in port to help me plan my return visit. Don't misunderstand me, of course, cruise ships are just part of the problem.

Good article. I think the new commissioner seems to be thoughtful.

Barcelona is a great city. I can understand why everyone wants to see it and also why management of tourism is needed.

Happy travels

I also appreciated the first hand account of a multi-faceted challenge. Many cities in Europe are in the same boat and have tried to address the issue in various ways (day tourist tax in Venice, amping the hotel tax in Amsterdam, AirBNB restrictions in many places). I didn't get the take that Barcelona is trying to shovel blame on tourists but rather is having a conversation about how to support their communities in line with their values. An admirable self reflection, sure wish more places took a moment to do the same.

Hi there,

Some ramblings from a Barcelona native…

Barcelona and Overtourism: When a Successful City Starts to Feel Used

Images of Barcelona residents spraying tourists with water pistols have travelled around the world. It is, to be fair, a fairly harmless form of protest. Very Catalan, perhaps: firm enough for the message to arrive, but without feeling the need to put anyone in the stocks. The images make good television. They can also give the impression that Barcelona has suddenly become hostile to anyone carrying a suitcase or studying Google Maps at a street corner.

The reality is more complicated. Harassing individual visitors is difficult to defend. Most tourists have not designed Barcelona’s housing policy, authorised another hotel or decided how many cruise ships should enter the port. But the frustration behind the protests did not appear overnight. For many locals, “enough is enough” is not really about tourists as individuals. It is about a city that increasingly appears to be organised for visitors rather than for those who live in it.

Tourism in Barcelona did not begin with the 1992 Olympic Games. The international exhibitions of 1888 and 1929 helped present Barcelona as a modern European city and encouraged the development of its hotel industry. Public tourism promotion began as early as 1906. Even so, for much of the twentieth century Barcelona remained primarily an industrial, commercial and port city. Foreign holidaymakers visiting Catalonia were more likely to head directly to the Costa Brava or the Costa Daurada than to spend several days in Barcelona. It is also worth remembering that Franco’s fascist dictatorship, which lasted from 1939 until 1975, and his deep hostility towards Catalans did little to help Barcelona develop as an open, modern international city.

But the Olympics in 1992 changed the scale of everything. They did not create modern Barcelona from nothing; it had been around already for 2000 years!- but they accelerated urban projects that had been discussed for years. The seafront was opened up, transport and public spaces were improved, hotel capacity expanded, and television audiences around the world discovered a Mediterranean city with Gaudí, beaches, nightlife and a strong visual identity. Barcelona had 18,569 hotel beds in 1990 and more than 25,000 by the end of 1992. The city received around 1.7 million visitors in the Olympic year, a figure that would multiply rapidly during the following decades.

Today, tourism is no longer a secondary activity. Barcelona received an estimated 15.6 million tourists in 2024. The problem is not just the total. It is also where visitors go and when they arrive. Much of the pressure is concentrated in a relatively small area around the Gothic Quarter, La Rambla, the Sagrada Família, Park Güell and Barceloneta.

Residents do not experience tourism as an annual statistic in a municipal report. They experience it as a bus they cannot board, noise at three in the morning, a traditional shop replaced by another luggage-storage business and apartment buildings where a rotating cast of guests has replaced neighbours.

Tourism contributes to Barcelona’s economy, but it is not the entire economy. It 'barely' represents roughly 15 per cent of the city’s economic activity. That matters, of course. Nobody sensible is suggesting that it can simply disappear without consequences. But nor is Barcelona a seaside village surviving on the generosity of visitors buying sangria. It is a major European city with industry, technology, logistics, universities, healthcare, professional services, design, culture and a large port.

This is worth explaining because some visitors react to criticism of tourism as though their spending personally pays every Barcelona resident’s salary. It does not. The city can reduce its dependence on some forms of tourism without collapsing into the Mediterranean.

People also come to Barcelona for many different reasons. Leisure tourism is the most visible. Visitors come for architecture, culture, food, climate, beaches and nightlife. But Barcelona is also an important destination for conferences, trade fairs and corporate meetings. In 2024, almost 2,000 meetings brought more than 730,000 participants to the wider destination. Others arrive for medical treatment, university study, sporting events, football, concerts, festivals, weddings or to visit friends and relatives.

Treating all of them as one identical mass is misleading. A conference delegate staying four nights, a family visiting relatives and a stag party occupying a tourist flat do not have the same impact on the city. One may attend meetings, have dinner and go to bed. Another may decide that 4 a.m. is an excellent time to discover the acoustics of a residential stairwell.

Cruise tourism creates a particularly visible form of pressure. Thousands of passengers can disembark within a short period and follow very similar routes through the same central neighbourhoods. Around two-thirds of cruise calls in 2024 involved stays of less than twelve hours. These visitors contribute to shops, guides, restaurants and transport companies. But their spending is often concentrated within a few hours and a few streets.

When people ask whether tourists “spend enough”, the issue is not simply whether they enrich one business or another. Their presence also adds to the cost of running the city, including cleaning, security, public transport and other services they also use -such as health services, for example. Many visitors would be surprised by just how many tourists are treated at Barcelona’s public primary care centres (paying only a fraction of the actual cost), another cost that rarely appears in discussions about how much tourists spend. Residents pay for those services through their taxes, so it is only reasonable to expect visitors to contribute as well.

Cruise ships also raise concerns about emissions, traffic and the environmental cost of bringing what is effectively a floating resort into one of Europe’s most densely populated cities. Barcelona has around 16,000 residents per square kilometre, or more than 40,000 per square mile. There is not a great deal of empty space available for several thousand additional people arriving simultaneously. The city council and port have agreed to reduce the number of cruise terminals from seven to five by 2030. That may help, although fewer terminals do not automatically mean fewer passengers. Large ships have a remarkable ability to compensate.

Does this mean tourism is responsible for every problem in Barcelona?

Of course not. Barcelonans are perfectly capable of criticising their own governments. In fact, being consistently dissatisfied with whoever governs us may be one of the more stable elements of Catalan political culture. We do not generally need foreign assistance for that.

The housing crisis, for example, cannot be explained only by tourist apartments. Insufficient affordable housing, property speculation, low salaries, weak regulation and years of inadequate public policy all matter. Rents rose dramatically between 2014 and 2024, and many residents blame local, Catalan and Spanish authorities at least as much as they blame visitors.

Tourism adds pressure. It also provides a very visible symbol of that pressure. But it is not the complete explanation, and blaming every urban problem on a family from Manchester looking for the Sagrada Família would be both inaccurate and rather lazy.

So, do Barcelonans want you here or not?

There is no single answer. Barcelona has 1.7 million residents, not one collective personality. But the kind of visitor who attracts resentment is easy to recognise: entitled, loud, drunk, inconsiderate, staying in illegal accommodation, treating residential buildings as hotels and public space as a private playground. The stereotype is not defined by nationality or by how much money someone spends. It is defined by behaviour and by the assumption that Barcelona exists primarily for their entertainment. This ain't Disneyworld, buddy!

Most visitors will never fit that description. Staying in legal accommodation, respecting people’s sleep, supporting local businesses and showing some curiosity about Catalan culture already makes a difference. You do not need to speak perfect Catalan, study the complete works of Josep Pla or pass an examination on local history. Basic awareness is enough.

“Enough is enough” does not necessarily mean “do not come”. More often, it means that Barcelona should remain a place where people can live, work, raise families and buy ordinary things, rather than becoming an increasingly successful product to be consumed.

I know it is complicated. I have also spent many years travelling, both for leisure and for work. As someone from Barcelona, and fully aware of the problems caused by overcrowding, I have always tried to make my presence as discreet, quiet and respectful of local people as possible. But however careful one tries to be, the simple fact of being there alongside millions of other visitors can still make daily life more difficult for thousands of residents who, it is worth remembering, do not make their living from tourism.

In the end, I think each of us has to find a balance between the desire to discover new places and an awareness of the impact we may have, and then decide when, how and perhaps even whether a place should be visited.

Some readers will understand this immediately because their cities face similar pressures. Others, living in places without millions of annual visitors, may understand it intellectually but not quite feel it.

And a few will be offended by the idea that a city might set limits on their convenience. Those are, quite possibly, the visitors Barcelona can manage without. And, frankly, they are rarely especially welcome in other destinations either. I remember similar feelings of local residents when I lived in London and later in Paris. Barcelona is not uniquely intolerant. It is simply another successful city discovering that success has consequences, especially when everyone wants a piece of it at the same time.

Enjoy your visit!

#overtourism #barcelona

Excellent explanation, Enric! Thank you!

You write very well, Eric and you explain things very well but Barcelona is still a very crowded city, maybe overcrowded.

And it is also overtouristed. Too many visitors putting a strain on the quality of life for residents.

So even the "perfect visitor", if there is any such thing, is going to add to the problem most especially during the months of June, July and August

Thus maybe some persons thinking abut vacation could reconsider Barcelona as a destination.

Maybe you could take some of the pressure off of Barcelona by going elsewhere. There are other places to go to even in Spain. Is it imperative that you go to Barcelona?

As for cruise ships, I sailed from Barcelona and I was left with the impression that some of the large cruise ships were going to move to another port. I can not remember the name of the port but it was maybe something like 60 miles away from Barcelona. it was already a working port but they were adding to it, so I believe. I thought Norwegian was going to be one of the lines moving to this other port.

As for spraying tourists with water guns, that happened maybe two or three years ago. Has it happened since?

I found Barcelona very pleasant and would consider going back but I do not want to add to the problems. I want to be part of the solution.

I will be interested in how the new Manager of Tourism will manage it.

Yep - great overview by @enric. Thanks.

I think Barcelona is VERY welcoming to tourists. When you welcome 16 MILLION visitors a year, it's hard to claim you're not welcoming.

To me, it seems they're just trying to strike a realistic balance between maintaining a robust tourism economy while allowing the other major drivers of their economy and local living to thrive too.

While the Ramblas was undergoing massive renovations when we were there in May, it was already an "avoid in general" area from our experiences there a couple year before. It seemed like it was the literal prime example of over-tourism and if, say, 20 years ago it was different, I can see why native Barceloneans would feel saddened (or angry) at the change.

We'll be back in Barcelona next year, and we'll continue our outward wandering - mostly away from the most touristy areas - but we'll still be near the core, so there's no avoiding many other tourists, but also many of the attractions that draw us back to the city. I also don't feel particularly bad as we spend time in the city pumping a lot of money into the local economy - hotel, restaurants, shopping, tour guides, ticket entries, transportation, etc. - so not as dramatic as the "daily" visits that have been so challenging to many cities (like Venice).

A popular city will always struggle with balance, but ignoring things when the balance gets out of whack is not the answer. So while Barcelona is getting headlines for addressing (or, trying to address) the issue, it's probably a good idea to worry more about all the "hot spots" you're not reading about instead. I read about Barcelona, Venice, Amsterdam, and several others who are actively working on the issue, but I only hear rumblings from smaller but booming places like Split or Dubrovnik that are in the midst of growing pains but likely less capable of balancing things most effectively. High on folks "want to see" list, but how sustainable is that and how worried do folks there start worrying about being "Game of Thrones" to death? And will it take 10 or 20 years for the "Not One Tourist More" interview with the Split tourism manager to make waves?

Enric, Thanks for doing such a good job of explaining the problems of overtourism. As someone who lives part-time in a place that is over-loved, I have seen how a place can be destroyed by tourists who decide to come back and live permanently in a place and are enabled by greedy developers who are in bed with corrupt politicians. Charleston and Mount Pleasant are no longer what they were when we first moved to SC in the last century. Sadly, the invasion virus is also infecting small communities nearby. Awendaw is a small community of mostly minority people where developers are now building many million dollar homes which will completely and sadly change the character of that community. People living on SC salaries cannot afford to live in communities inhabited by people who move from states where they were able to sell their homes for much more than what has been the norm in SC.

Enric, thank you for the great writeup! Very helpful.

Happy travels.

Barcelona wishing me to stay away is a most wonderful synergy. The universe is in balance.

While it was never a backwater, the overly successful development of Barcelona into a major tourist destination is, from an outsider perspective, quite fascinating. I have an old Michelin guidebook from Spain from the late 70s, where Barcelona does not even get 3 stars as a destination, but just 2, i.e. "worth a detour". Art Nouveau / Modernisme was an impopular style at the time, the Sagrada Familia works were progressing slowly, and as Enric mentions, the seafront as we know it today did not really exist - my understanding is that the beaches were gradually rehabilitated (or built) in the 80s.

I couldn't find the stay away in the story. Even the thread title needs context. I believe the statement "Not One Tourist More" was in the context of, than the current number.

The poor Spanish must battle the problems with the added baggage of well meaning, ill informed, self proclaimed experts in the outside world. But I have faith in the system and will follow it with great interest.

Perhaps the reason is that I have visited Barcelona, which I liked very much, but feel no compelling reason to return to the city or even Spain (unless I do something seemingly insane like walk the Camino Frances). But the basic feeling is that, with one caveat, the people of Barcelona can do what they want regarding tourism. If they want to eliminate or greatly reduce cruise-ship visitors, fine. If they want to impose a hotel tax on foreign visitors that is the amount of the hotel rate, which would dramatically reduce tourism, go for it.

But I make two points. First, the "caveat" above is that upset residents don't have the right to shoot water guns at tourists. Some water guns look like real guns. It is technically a battery. Squirting people with water guns is insulting. And in some places, someone with the water gun is going to get smacked in the face--and should.

Second, I simply maintain that too many social complaints are too quickly attributed to tourists, who in the US often pay heavy taxes on hotels and rental cars financing any number of public projects. The world is not static. Things change. Cities grow or decline. Yes, city growth means the city becomes more expensive to live in and the displacement of people who can no longer afford to live in certain areas. Really extreme examples over decades, if not generations, are San Francisco, Palo Alto (the most extreme), and Manhattan. But it also means a city that is more economically dynamic, that offers more and higher paying jobs, and that has a more lively arts scene.

Tourism helped make what Barcelona is today. Yes, there can be too much of a good thing, and balance is usually the right prescription for most things in life. But I find there is a tendency to ignore what tourism pays for and how many businesses thrive because of it, and to inflate the connection between tourists and social ills.

RJ, pretty complex. Its why I say stay out of it. Let the local culture figure it out. Not my place to define their housing priorities or any of the issues.

People forget every decision has winners and losers and its not an outsiders place to participate in those decisions, or attemp to influence the decisions. Mother used to say that the road to heII is paved with good intentions.

It is my responsibility to obey the law in fact and in spirit. And I get to decide if I want to go and fool with the whole mess ... not.

But I do wish them the best ad do strongly believe that they will find solutions supported by the majority.

Mr. E, I agree. Not my business. Let the locals make their decisions, and I will make mine. And I suppose my take concerns less what they might decide than what reasons they are offering for what they decide.

Very interesting discussion.

My feeling remain that if a place does not want me, I can find other places to go to. Plain and simple. I would prefer to find a place that wants me and even needs me and my money.

Cala, I live in Austin, Texas and can relate to much of what you are saying. I moved to Austin in 1972 when the total population was 150,000 and living was cheap and easy.

Now the population is a million plus and Austin is now one of the most expensive places to live in the entire Untied States.

Old timers have been forced to move out because they can not afford housing as well as other necessities.

bostonphil7, I'm from San Antonio. We didn't have the impact from migration (CA) that you did.

Mr. E and Bostonphil, I'm surprised about San Antonio not attracting people. I have not been to Austin, but I loved the Riverwalk in San Antonio. CNBC just listed their 10 worst states to live in and TX was on the list, so maybe that will give you a little relief from the invasion. Unfortunately, SC is not on that list, but fortunately AL is. Al i still a state with high numbers of immigrants from other states, but it's much easier to absorb a few at the time as opposed to the extreme migration to SC that has occurred. How does all this relate to the topic of the post? We empathize with the permanent residents of Barcelona whose lives are being adversely affected by the massive invasion of tourists.

San Antonio has had growth, just not the type that changes costs and culture much. Bexar County has gone from about 2 million to about 2.2 million in the last 5 years. Its s good thing.

But change is going to happen and I dont know if you can stop it without creating worse collateral damage. I saw an attempt in my current home town and a large segment of normal folks took a huge hit to accommodate another group of normal folks. Too early to tell but it appears that the end result might be a net negative benefit. But every circumstance is unique so I watch with great tminterest.