Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

Laia Bonet and Xavier Marcé present the projects that will be implemented using Next Generation funds to tourist-sector stakeholders. A total of 19 projects have obtained funding, for an overall value of nearly €41 million.

This Wednesday, the Miró Foundation auditorium was the setting for the presentation of the ‘Sustainable Tourism Plan in Destination Barcelona’, with the participation of Laia Bonet, the Third Deputy Mayor responsible for the Area of Economy, Employment, Competition and Taxation, and Xavier Marcé, the Councillor for Tourism and Creative Industries. The event featured the projects being financed using Next Generation European funds in the area of tourism, divided into 4 main groups:

-Culture and Heritage

-Sustainability

-Innovation

-Sustainable Mobility

These groups cover 6 major areas:

1) Coastline: improvement initiatives concerning the city’s beaches and the Fòrum bathing area, with a planned investment of €4 million.

2) Besòs/Collserola: initiatives for revitalising Collserola Nature Park and the Rec Comtal irrigation channel, with the development of 4 projects for the amount of nearly €5.5 million.

3) Montjuïc: improvements to the accessibility to this large city park, with a comprehensive renovation of the mountain’s escalators, to guarantee accessibility and improve energy efficiency, as well as the adaptation of Montjuïc Castle to expand the area open to visitors, with a budget of over €7 million.

4) Sustainable Mobility:  projects aimed at making tourist mobility more sustainable and more compatible with city life, with an allocation of over €5 million. The role of the Estació del Nord bus station will be enhanced and the Zona Bus, for parking coaches, will be improved by means of technological innovations.

5) New decentralised tourism activities: new, competitive points of interest are proposed in order to achieve urban balance in a polycentric city. Initiatives include the renovation of Parc de la Ciutadella, to recover its full potential as a park and turn it into a leading European hub for knowledge, dissemination, research and innovation. Other initiatives include the environmental restoration of Parc del Laberint d’Horta, the creation of the Urban Art Laboratory in Nou Barris, the adaptation of the Employment and City Interpretation Centre at Fabra i Coats, an immersive room for the 15th century murals of St. Michael’s Chapel in the Monestir de Pedralbes, and the creation of the Geological Garden in Les Corts, which taken together have a total budget of nearly €10 million.

6) Innovation: projects set to make a leap forward in the digitalisation of promotion, visitor information and tourism management, with the goal of positioning Barcelona as an innovative destination. These initiatives will be overseen by the Barcelona Tourist Consortium, with financial aid to the sector’s associations via public-private collaboration, for a total value of over €7 million.

Also attending the event were Carme Ribas, the manager of the Besòs Consortium; Eduard Torres, president of the Barcelona Tourist Consortium’s Executive Committee, Marta Labata, CEO of B:SM and Marko Daniel, director of the Joan Miró Foundation.

The event, which addressed the various stakeholders in the tourism sector, served to detail the 19 projects and measures that will be carried out in the city over the next 3 years, all financed by European funds. They are grouped together into initiatives focused on the city’s new decentralised tourism activities, heritage and culture, sustainability, innovation, sustainable mobility, etc.