Managing the tourist city. Insights from Barcelona
Tourism is an inherent and constitutive part of the current urban phenomenon. Tourist practices structure urban life in cities worldwide through infrastructure, imagery, activities , and the bodies they inhabit, generating friction, tension, and burdens for the permanent resident population. In turn, tourism becomes a reality through the construction and transformation of the city, its production and consumption patterns, often intensifying dynamics of socioeconomic inequality and fragmentation. Contemporary cities must therefore embrace tourism as a collective issue and as a vector in the construction of metropolitan space which needs to be regulated and governed like any other urban phenomenon.
One of the most substantial changes in the city of Barcelona in recent years is the fact that the debate surrounding tourism has become a public concern. The progressive increase in visitors, until reaching 15.5 million in 2024 and the evidence of its effects has given rise to a visible and pluralistic debate that has multiplied the voices, themes, and even objects of dispute within the framework we call tourism. Thus, it has become evident that tourism can no longer be addressed exclusively in a sectoral way, limited to the frameworks of academic expertise, market techniques or the interests of economic agents linked to tourism. On the contrary, the discussion on sectoral policies must be integrated into a broader agenda, taking into account the opportunities and challenges for the city and the surrounding region. Thus, addressing tourism as an activity inherent to the social and economic dynamics of the metropolitan area involves considering not only tourism’s shared responsibility in the configuration of the metropolis, but also̶and here is found the key aspect̶the mechanisms of metropolitan space production that have facilitated the development of tourism activities.
In this context, Barcelona was one of the first European cities to recognize the need to regulate tourism in order to address its negative effects through urban policies. Above all, the approval in 2017 of the Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodation (PEUAT) was undoubtedly the most significant regulatory action. This urban planning instrument limited the city’s accommodation supply by prohibiting the construction of new hotels in the city center while simultaneously freezing the number of short-term rentals permits in the city. A plan that has been approved only after a public debate beyond the sector, including other voices such as residents associations, housing right activists or environmental conservationists but also after a long data-driven discussion on the impacts of the accommodation and the short term rentals over the housing market, urban mobility or the loss of traditional business.
However, despite its technical and legal soundness and the widespread political consensus that continues to support it, there is a lot yet to be done. PEUAT alone has turned out clearly insufficient to curb the overtourism of Barcelona. The attempts of regulating visitor flows in crowded spaces, tackling sustainable mobility policies for tourism uses or improving enforcement policies to penalize illegal accommodation have proven key to mitigating certain impacts. And yet, as a global phenomenon, we need to scale up the agenda at the national and European level: urges to stop airport expansions, to tax carbon emissions from tourism, to regulate extractive digital platforms, to protect labor rights coming from tourism among others. Managing the tourist city requires a manifold of technical instruments but, above all, a political awareness of what it is at stake, this is, the future of livable and lively cities for the many.
