Barcelona Llibres

Barcelona Metròpolis analyses the phenomenon of urban tourism through the multi-faceted perspective of seven experts in this field: Greg Richards, José Antonio Donaire, Fabiola Mancinelli, Miquel Puig, Lola Domènech, Francesc González Reverté and Maria Abellanet. Published in issue 133, the subject is introduced in the editorial Rethinking Tourism by the magazine’s editor, Milagros Pérez Oliva. “A sector that represents 14% of the city’s GDP and employs 150,000 people can never be neglected as the lives and resources of many people depend on it. Yet that must not prevent action being taken on the negative aspects of mass tourism”.

Greg Richards, professor of Leisure Studies at Tilburg University, opens the piece with an analysis on the policies being implemented by cities such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen. “The cost of reaching popular cities and staying in them has dropped dramatically, leading to so-called ‘new urban tourism’, affirms Richards before analysing the effects this phenomenon is having in many cities.

José Antonio Donaire, full professor at the Faculty of Tourism at the University of Girona, explores the different strategies for minimising the impact of tourism, from limiting its growth to distributing tourists in time and space or selecting those with more spending power. He concludes with a warning: “All these actions only displace the problem as the growing demand will look for alternative options”.

In the article “Digital nomads: The new phenomenon impacting global cities”, the anthropologist Fabiola Mancinelli talks about “those with greater spending power than the local population, defying the traditional labour model and fixed face-to-face working hours hours to transfer work to holiday destinations”.

For his part, the economist Miquel Puig explains how tourism could have a positive effect for the people of Barcelona, reducing its capacity and its pressure on the property market. “The proposal of eliminating tourist accommodation licences is an optimal option”, he affirms. But the added value of the sector also needs to be increased through wages, taxes and benefits.

Lola Domènech, the co-director of KM_Zero, the team which won the project to revamp La Rambla, explains that the urban transformation of this avenue in the heart of Barcelona also seeks to regain the space for city residents, redressing the loss of identity suffered as a result of the impact of tourism.

Another point of view is offered by the expert Francesc González Reverté , who analyses emotional responses to tourism: “If the sensation of control of everyday living spaces diminishes, negative emotions can be generated towards the incoming phenomenon”.

The dossier concludes with a piece by Maria Abellanet, chair of the CETT, the University Centre for Tourism, Hospitality and Gastronomy, opting for training as the basis for regenerative tourism, a new focus that “enables visitors to be aware of their potential negative impact”.

Also in Barcelona Metròpolis…  

The interviews in this issue bring us reflection on justice and literature. The journalists Jesús G. Albalat talks to the former public prosecutor of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia, José María Mena, who looks back at a career that began at the height of Francoism. “The topic of nationalities and regions has still not been squeezed out of the Constitution. So let them squeeze it out. There’s room for everything in the Constitution”, he affirms.

For her part, Gemma Ventura interviews the writer Marta Orriols, based on her latest book La possibilitat de dir-ne casa: “Suddenly my world has been reduced to writing, which is a luxury, but it’s harder than people think”.

In the section Urban Visions, Gerard Pruna explores the Ciutat Vella Agreement. The agreement will drive a major transformation of the district, which “unlike previous plans, not only acts on the skin of the neighbourhood, with a big urban operation, but also goes much further”. For his part, Albert Rigol analyses the first effects in Barcelona of the state law that allows for limits to be applied to rents. Without being definitive, the conclusion shows a reduction in prices and also in the options offered.

The photographer Mandy Barker, who devotes her life and soul to denouncing plastic pollution in seas and oceans, is the protagonist in the section In Transit. Her exhibition at the Museu Diocesà de Barcelona had over two hundred thousand visits.

This issue’s Open Data explores a problem that has ranked higher among the concerns of people in the city’s neighbourhoods: noise. Where are the most conflictive points? What types of noise are they exposed to? What effects do they have on people’s health? What measures are being taken? These are some of the questions addressed by Oriol Pàmies through the infograms of Carles Javierre.

In the Culture Folder for this edition, the nine experts in the Debate focus on a hot topic: social media and loss of credibility. The current situation has taken such a significant turn that we even need to ponder if, instead of being allies to freedom of expression, social media have become a danger to democracy.

The folder also includes a report by Marta Aguilar on how artificial intelligence is having an effect on Barcelona’s cultural and creative ecosystem. In the book section, Jaume Fabre reviews Els papers de Tierno Galván. La rivalitat Madrid-Barcelona dels primers ajuntaments democràtics, written by Àlex Masllorens. For his part, Josep Maria Ganyet talks about Nexus, the latest book by Yuval Noah Harari, of which he says: “It offers us a fascinating perspective. The systems of governance we have created are essentially networks for the exchange of information”. As for the exhibition pages, these are devoted to Amazons. The Ancestral Future, on at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona until 4 May 2025.

The magazine closes with the story Montjuïc 1971, penned by Julià Guillamon. The illustrations for this story, on the cover and in the dossier, are the work of Irene Pérez, while the protagonist of the photographic insert is Blanca Viñas, with Two Eyes Wander Restlessly, a route around Barcelona as a frontier city from an idealist perspective.