This Thursday, the Barcelona City Council announced a set of measures to manage tourism in the city that it hopes to negotiate with municipal groups and of which it has only detailed some. The most concrete, for now, is to regulate the circulation and parking of buses with tourists who spend the day in the city. Their intention is to reduce the parking of these vehicles and quadruple the rate they currently pay.
Tourists who do not stay in Barcelona do not usually appear in official figures, but the City Council estimates that they amount to 10 million per year (for comparison, overnight stays in the city’s tourist hotels and apartments are 12 million).
These are mainly cruise passengers, but also those who arrive in the Catalan capital by coach, often on day trips organised from other tourist locations. According to municipal data, there are 156,000 coach journeys per year, including parking in garages and on the road. There are an average of 40 per day, which is particularly damaging in certain areas such as the area around the Sagrada Familia or, more recently, the Ronda Universitat.
The Deputy Mayor for Economy, Finance and Tourism, Jordi Valls, has presented some measures within the framework of the project called Zone Bus 4.0, which aims to limit the circulation of coaches to 70,000 in 2025. On the one hand, it is planned to eliminate parking spaces. in central areas. On the other hand, they propose to increase the operating costs from the current 20 euros to 80 euros, with which the municipality aims to collect around four million per year.
The increase in the rate must, however, be included in the modification of the tax ordinances of 2025. A procedure for which they will need a majority in plenary session which obliges them to negotiate with the opposition.
Valls explained that the Government Measure for Tourism Management brings together a total of 55 measures with a budget of 254.7 million until 2027, when the mandate ends. With this, they want to give continuity to the High Traffic Space Management Plan (EGA), which studies how to avoid overcrowding in places like the Rambla or the Sagrada Familia. In addition, it includes the creation of a Citizen Fund for Return to Tourism (ReCiutat), the revision of the tourist tax and the Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodation (PEUAT).
The reformulation of the PEUAT must include the elimination of the figure for tourist apartments, which the City Council has committed to eliminating completely in 2028. But it also opens the door to the reopening of “unique” hotels in the city center, as agreed by the PSC with Junts.
