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.

The initial announcement was that ERC's group at Barcelona City Council would table a proposal to limit the number of cruise passengers visiting the city and prevent more than 200,000 visiting the city in any given month, while before the pandemic 400,000 cruise passengers would visit the city in August. The text that has finally been brought to debate, however, no longer speaks of limitations or caps. Instead, it asks the Port to prioritise cruise passengers embarking in the city to those who only stop over, since the first spending more in the city. This is a waiting move until the Council receives the results of the study commissioned to determine how many tourists the city centre can accommodate and draw up the strategic tourism plan 2023-2026 taking this into account.

The Port of Barcelona has restarted the activity of international cruises this Saturday, with the arrival of the first ship after fourteen months of being halted due to the pandemic. An MSC ship arrived in port at six o'clock in the morning with 1,500 tourists who have embarked in Italian ports. They are mainly Italian travellers and also some Germans. In Barcelona, in addition, 500 more travellers will embark before the ship resumes its route this afternoon. Although there is not yet a concrete forecast of how this resumption of activity will continue, the Port of Barcelona foresees new stopovers from July onwards, with the companies Tui, Costa and Aida. In August the North American companies Royal Caribbean and Norwegian will also arrive.