This is not an exclusive phenomenon BarcelonaBut this is perhaps where the debate is most heated. As the numbers reach peak levels again – it is estimated that this year the 28 million visitors mark could be exceeded in 2019 – the city has assumed that something must be done to organize this flow, or at least compensate in some way for the impact it causes. How to do this is another debate.
In the Barcelona City Council chaired by Jaume Collboni (PSC), although they deny the policies of tourism phobia and degrowth led by Ada Colau Commons, measures are beginning to be implemented. Among these, the most energetic are the closure before 2028 of the approximately 10,000 holiday apartments that the city would have and, also, a new increase in the tourist tax. For this, and as was clear after the meeting that the mayor had yesterday with President Salvador Illa, we have the support of the Generalitat.
In this sense, during the meeting, Collboni conveyed to Illa the need to increase tourist taxes on short-stay cruises, that is, those that stay less than twelve hours in the city, disembark a large number of visitors with little time to spend and that are partly responsible for the overpressure and the feeling of saturation in certain neighborhoods of Barcelona.
A rate of 6.25 euros per daywhich from October will be seven, including the regional section. Barcelona is thus in the upper range of European cities. In the case of five-star hotels, the rate will be 7.50 in two months.
Up to 803 cruise ships with 3.5 million tourists on board have called at Barcelona in 2023. Of these, almost half have spent less than twelve hours in the city, a figure that the city council considers excessive, to the point that it is considering addressing the municipality. Port to reconsider some of the planned terminals. The city now has five in operation, a sixth under construction and a seventh allocated.
The Minister of the Presidency, after yesterday’s meeting, announced that the Government assumed the request and that it would be incorporated into the project Budgets for 2025 which is just beginning to be negotiated. The groups on which the PSC wants to rely to advance them, ERC and Comunes, have always been in favour of this measure, so it is assumed that it will be applied, without excluding the possibility that other increases may be agreed in other areas of Catalonia.
On the other hand, and during the same meeting, Illa informed Collboni of his desire to maintain the regional decree regulating tourist apartments approved in the previous legislature by the ERC, and on the basis of which the City Council announced before the summer its intention to close its doors in 2028 all the holiday apartments in the municipality, which now represent more than 40% of the total nights of visitors. The PP has already appealed the tariff to the TC and the association of employers of tourist apartments Apartmentwho consider this measure as an illegal expropriation, will also fight against a measure which, according to them, will not be implemented due to its manifest illegality.
In addition to issues related to tourism, the City Council and the Generalitat have reactivated the construction project 1,700 protected housing units in the Catalan capital, as well as security measures.
