No more growth in tourism

It seems like a good resolution to start the year, and it's what Barcelona's Tourism Commissioner, José Antonio Donaire, announced a few days ago in statements to ACN: "There is a consensus on not increasing the number of tourist accommodations in Barcelona." Not increasing the number of tourist accommodations also means not increasing the number of visitors. Barcelona received 12.7 million tourists in 2024, and we will soon know the exact number who visited the city in 2025, which is expected to be around the same figure.

Barcelona has become like the Balearic Islands, meaning it has surrendered (or rather, been surrendered to) mass tourism. The figures have more than tripled in the last twenty-five years: from almost four million tourists in 2000, the number has reached the aforementioned 12.7 million, which, however, is not the most exorbitant number of visitors in a single year. That record, of course, belongs to the legendary 2010 season, a time of nostalgia for many business owners in the sector. In that last year of the pre-pandemic era, Barcelona reached 14 million visitors, and some saw no limit to the growth.

Now it seems that a limit must finally be reached. But the figures, and the response they receive from the authorities, run counter to the intention of halting tourism growth: in 2024, El Prat Airport received 55 million passengers (the maximum established by Aena's current master plan for this airport), and the Port of Barcelona registered 3.5 million cruise ship arrivals. These numbers are even more striking when we recall that, not so long ago, there was debate about the need to limit cruise ship traffic in the ports of Barcelona and Palma, due to their extremely negative impact on the seabed, and also on the cities where they dock. As for the airport, the Catalan Government, with the full support of the Spanish Government, is leading the project to expand it to reach 70 million passengers per year (without damaging the Ricarda ecosystem, of course).

Thus, the commissioner announces a consensus to halt tourism growth, but infrastructure planning indicates otherwise. There is another figure to consider: the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold established in the Paris Agreement as the maximum global temperature increase. The scientific community agrees in warning that exceeding this milestone is dangerous, and that we will surpass it in the coming years. Tourism is a particularly polluting activity and also one of the most affected by weather conditions. Furthermore, this year has been the first in which Fodor's guide has advised against travel to the Balearic Islands and Barcelona, ​​specifically, due to tourist overcrowding. Rather than tentatively beginning to discuss halting tourism growth, it is time to confront the need for degrowth and to propose alternatives to over-tourism.