It won't be a panacea, nor will it solve the tourist influx in Barcelona, but it's a small step in the right direction. Limiting the number of cruise passengersThe reduction, agreed upon by the City Council and the Port based on reducing arrival capacity, is a gesture. Many more gestures will have to come if the city truly wants to recover for the people of Barcelona, who see how the public spaces in the most tourist-intensive areas no longer belong to them or who are being directly expelled because they cannot afford housing. For the moment, the concerted policy of reducing the number of cruise passengers will have a limited but concrete impact, which will be most noticeable in the city center, where these short-stay tourists arriving by boat are concentrated.
What the City Council and the Port have agreed upon is to reduce the capacity of the terminals by 5,800 passengers. In fact, two will be closed and a new one will be built, but overall, this reduction in the number of cruise passengers will result. In round numbers, the total number of tourists arriving by boat at any given time will therefore drop from 37,000 to 31,000. Since 2018, cruise passenger traffic in Barcelona has grown by 20%. Now, for the first time, there will be a mandatory reduction. The measure will be implemented through the closure of two terminals and the opening of a new, more modern one, managed not privately but publicly, which will allow room to shape the type of service carried, prioritizing, for example, small ships and those with Barcelona as their home port. The measure responds to the agreement between the PSC (Copérative Council of the Catalan Government) and the Comunes (Comuns) during the negotiation of the 2025 tax ordinances.
The changes, however, will take time to be noticed, as the operation, which will also be used to install new systems to connect the ships to the electricity grid, will not be completed until 0 and 0 until 0. The mobility improvement plan for the area to mitigate the impact of cruise passengers on the city. Among other projects, a promenade is planned to connect the Drassanes and Marina del Prat Vermell beaches, on both sides of Montjuïc, by foot, bicycle, and public transport. The total public-private investment will amount to €185 million.
Tourism is a voracious economic engine, important in quantitative terms, but it generates wealth more in the short term than in the long term, while also being a source of problems. From an economic perspective, it cannot be eliminated suddenly, although the goal should be to reduce its relative weight and expand in other, more productive sectors with lower social costs. Regarding coexistence, it is necessary to find ways to stop further harming the daily life and general experience of citizens, and to protect basic rights such as housing, among other things in the interest of the tourism sector itself, because Barcelona could lose much of its welcoming atmosphere if its inhabitants increasingly become tourist-phobic. Either the brakes are put on, as has begun to be done in the port, or the golden goose of tourism will end up turning increasingly against the city.
