‘Cruises are not the problem’ – Barcelona’s businesses hit back at tourist crackdown ...Middle East

MADRID – Cruise passengers arriving in Barcelona represent only a tiny fraction of the tourists filling the overcrowded city, the chief of the city’s port has said, as business hit back tourism crackdowns.

Jose Alberto Carbonell, director general of the Port of Bareclona, admitted that the city suffered a problem with too many tourists but said cruises were not the principal problem.

“Cruises represent 5 per cent of tourism in Barcelona. With this I am not denying a problem,” he told La Vanguardia newspaper. “But they are only 5 per cent and they must be 5 per cent of the solution.”

Some 15.4 million people visited Barcelona last year, according to the Barcelona Tourism Observatory, a fall of 0.2 per cent compared with 2023. The sector, which accounts for about 14 per cent of the city’s GDP, experienced 10.5 per cent year-on-year growth.

Last week, Barcelona council’s deputy mayor Laia Bonet said the council had sent a letter to the city’s port authorities to start negotiations to reduce the number of terminals where the cruise liners arrive.

Currently, there are seven terminals, but the council wants to reduce this to five.

Last year, a record 2.79 million cruise passengers arrived in Barcelona, a rise of 1 per cent compared with 2023.

Mr Carbonell said the port authorities were open to discussions with the council.

In 2018, Barcelona council and the port authorities reached a deal to cut the number of terminals from nine to seven.

Meanwhile, other tourism groups have warned that targeting tourists will harm the city’s finances.

Apartur, which represents tourist flat owners in Barcelona, said if the council went ahead with its plan to close 10,000 tourist flats by 2028 it would mean a huge economic loss for the city.

“This is bad news for the city that the mayor wants to expropriate the property of these owners,” Quique Alcantará, president of Apartur, told The i Paper.

“It is an attack on their rights, and more than that Barcelona cannot lose about 40 per cent of its tourist accommodation.”

Mobile World Congress, one of the biggest trade conventions, is about to start next week in Barcelona.

Barcelona escalates tourist crackdown with push to reduce cruise ship numbers

Many of the 100,000 delegates from around the world depend on tourist flats when they visit a city with a population of 1.6 million.

Protests have been staged in cities across Spain against tourist flats, with demonstrators claiming that they push up the price of housing beyond the reach of local people.

In an effort to balance the need to deal with this housing crisis and to promote tourism, a key driver of the economy, Spain’s left-wing government unveiled a raft of measures last month, including a 100 per cent tax on property buyers from non-EU countries, like Britain, who are not residents.

Alberto Núñez Feijoó, the leader of the conservative opposition People’s Party, criticised the government’s housing proposals by suggesting alternative measures that should strengthen the law against squatters.

At present, housing laws in Spain are slanted in favour of renters, which can put off some owners from renting out their homes.

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