The Guardian picture essay
How tourism is killing Barcelona - a photo essay
One of the coolest destinations in Europe just two decades ago, Barcelona is now so overcrowded it has become a tourist theme park -and is losing the character that made it so popular
by Stephen Burgen. Photography: Paola de Grenet
Thu 30 Aug 2018 06.30 BST Last
modified on Mon 3 Sep 2018 13.35 BST
It’s 9am on a hot August morning and
timed tickets to visit Barcelona’s emblematic Sagrada Família basilica have
already sold out. Only a few years ago you could turn up and queue for maybe
half an hour to get in but with the soaring numbers of visitors to the city
(around 30 million last year) anyone who arrives on spec is likely to be
disappointed.
Those who have
tickets amuse themselves in the queue by taking selfies in front of the
temple’s ornate nativity facade. Groups of tourists trail behind their
lollipop-waving guides. Street vendors spread out their wares on the pavement –
pirated designer sunglasses and tacky memorabilia - until a heavily-armed
police patrol moves them on. At the stalls around the square you can buy soft
toys, Gaudí ashtrays and Barça scarves.
Antoni
Gaudí’s masterpiece was begun in 1882 and is due for completion in 2026. The
work was intended to be funded by penitent sinners – but there are more
tourists than repenters around these days (it is the city’s most popular
destination, with 4.5 million visitors in 2016), so tourists are footing the
bill.
At Casa
Batlló, Gaudí’s apartment building in the busy Passeig de Gràcia, the queue
snakes around the corner, and this is the queue for people who have bought
advance tickets at €28.50. They wait behind a sign that says “Skip the Line”.
The woman at the door says the wait for people with tickets is around 20
minutes. After a pause she shrugs: “OK, perhaps more like 40.”
Barcelona
remains a beautiful city, one of the most attractive in Europe, huddled between
the mountains and the sea, with a wonderful climate and wealth of architecture
and history. It used to pride itself on the quality of its design and was
dubbed the capital of cool in the late 20th century. It is far from cool now
though, and a day traipsing around the tourist hotspots reveals how it has
become the home of tat, with the magic word “Barcelona” printed on any old
junk, from straw hats and teddy bears to beach towels and coffee mugs. Not to
mention all manner of ceramic creatures made in Gaudí’s trencadís style
of broken tiles.
La Rambla is
Barcelona’s most famous street but for residents it became its least-loved long
ago, so crowded as to be virtually impassable for nine months of the year. From
the moment it was created in the 18th century La Rambla became a place where
the wealthy could flaunt their finery and the poor could hustle and everyone
could breathe, outside the walls of the crowded mediaeval city. It was never
chic, indeed, it was always slightly edgy and marginal – but now there is
nothing but souvenir shops, interspersed by McDonald’s and shabby restaurants
serving kebabs and paella a startling shade of chrome yellow.
At all
hours, young men invite you sotto voce to a “coffee shop” à la Amsterdam. This
is something new. At night there are prostitutes, which isn’t new, except now
most of the women have been trafficked.
Last year a
consortium was appointed to come up with a plan to attract residents back to La
Rambla. They have consulted widely and details of the plan are expected to be
published soon, but they have their work cut out.
“La Rambla
is above all a business,” says Fermín Villar, president of the Friends of La
Rambla, which represents the street’s residential and commercial interests.
“Every year more than 100 million people walk along this street. Imagine, if
each person spends only one euro.”
Itziar
González, the architect who heads the symposium, says the first task is to
convince people that La Rambla can be saved. “It’s not just about changing
things,” she says, “it’s about changing minds.”
It’s
doubtful, however, whether the Boqueria food market on La Rambla can be saved.
Once a mecca for cooks and foodies where you could buy everything from truffles
to edible insects, the stallholders are one by one caving in to the force
majeure of tourism, with fresh fish, meat and vegetables giving way to juice
bars and assorted takeaways. The very reason for visiting la Boqueria – even as
a tourist – will soon cease to exist.
Barcelona is
one of Europe’s most densely populated cities, with few open spaces. So when
the seafront at Barceloneta was opened up in time for the 1992 Olympic Games it
gave the city breathing space, just as La Rambla had two centuries earlier. It
became the new place to pasear, the evening or Sunday stroll that
is such a part of Spanish life.
But
Barceloneta has become another no-go zone for residents as it has degenerated
into a sort of urban Lloret de Mar. Lie on the crowded beach and every few
minutes a vendor will offer you beer or water or a mojito, a massage, a henna
tattoo and sometimes weed. Rickshaws ply the waterfront while shirtless young
men whizz by on electric scooters.
The saddest
thing about all this is the city is rapidly losing its identity and becoming
like everywhere else. A new word has been coined to describe this apparently
unstoppable process: parquetematización – the act of becoming
a theme park. Barcelona has become an imitation of itself.
