Mayor Jaume Collboni (Barcelona, 1969) receives ARA when there is just one year left until the municipal elections. We talk about housing –the main problem for Barcelonians–, tourism, security, and also about the situation of the PSOE amidst the Zapatero storm.

Ten months after reaching an agreement to reduce cruise terminals, the Port and the Barcelona City Council once again have an open melon on the table. It was placed this Wednesday by the mayor, Jaume Collboni, when he defended in an interview with Betevé that he aspired for scale cruises – those that only spend a few hours in the city – to disappear completely in the coming years. This Thursday, from the Port, they have responded to the mayor, defending the importance of this type of vessel and emphasizing that eliminating them will not solve the problem of tourist overcrowding in the Catalan capital.

More pressure on cruise ships that do not have Barcelona as their home port and only make a stopover. The mayor of the Catalan capital, Jaume Collboni, announced this Wednesday that his objective is that in the coming years this type of offering does not exist in the city and that only vessels that have the Catalan capital as their home port dock in the Port of Barcelona. In an interview with Betevé, he advocated for "reducing cruise stopovers to zero" in the coming years. "We have to start making brave and very clear decisions in this regard," he said.

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.