A lot of the problems are always about people wanting to have their cake and eat it too.
oskanta on
> A plan to double the tourist tax — up to more than $16 (15 euros) per tourist per night in Barcelona — was unveiled in February by the Catalan regional government. If approved, it would earmark at least 25% of the revenue to help ease a housing shortage, which is a prime complaint among residents.
This seems like a pretty reasonable solution, right?
Stanley--Nickels on
Just tax tourism (serious)
fakefakefakef on
Obviously better housing policy would fix a lot of this but we’re all good neolibs an we know that. That said, I sympathize when cities get so overrun with tourists that it’s hard to actually live in them anymore. Sure, developing the more modern parts of town away from the historic center would probably help, but it’s sad that Barcelona’s residents can’t really live in the historic parts of their own city due to how expensive and crowded they’ve gotten.
SKabanov on
Water-gun attacks aside, the Festa Major de Gràcia in August is the best indicator of tourism sentiment, because it’s *the* high-visibility event during the travel month where people congregate in one specific area. Unfortunately, it’s gotten bad over the past few years:
* “Tourists go home” gets spray-painted on more and more surfaces, and there’s now people who hang the xenophobic banner “Gràcia per a les veïnes” (“Gràcia for the neighbors” in Catalan) on their balconies
* The correfoc (pyrotechnics parade, basically) was cancelled last year due to bickering between the different groups that participate, but when the groups protested in front of the municipal authorities were blaming the guiris (the popular racist slur for white foreigners from northern Europe and North America)
* Some of the street displays were blatantly xenophobic; one about Catalan viniculture had “Miris on miris tots són guiris” (“Wherever you look, they’re all guiris” in Catalan) painted on one of the paper-maché wine barrels.
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A lot of the problems are always about people wanting to have their cake and eat it too.
> A plan to double the tourist tax — up to more than $16 (15 euros) per tourist per night in Barcelona — was unveiled in February by the Catalan regional government. If approved, it would earmark at least 25% of the revenue to help ease a housing shortage, which is a prime complaint among residents.
This seems like a pretty reasonable solution, right?
Just tax tourism (serious)
Obviously better housing policy would fix a lot of this but we’re all good neolibs an we know that. That said, I sympathize when cities get so overrun with tourists that it’s hard to actually live in them anymore. Sure, developing the more modern parts of town away from the historic center would probably help, but it’s sad that Barcelona’s residents can’t really live in the historic parts of their own city due to how expensive and crowded they’ve gotten.
Water-gun attacks aside, the Festa Major de Gràcia in August is the best indicator of tourism sentiment, because it’s *the* high-visibility event during the travel month where people congregate in one specific area. Unfortunately, it’s gotten bad over the past few years:
* “Tourists go home” gets spray-painted on more and more surfaces, and there’s now people who hang the xenophobic banner “Gràcia per a les veïnes” (“Gràcia for the neighbors” in Catalan) on their balconies
* The correfoc (pyrotechnics parade, basically) was cancelled last year due to bickering between the different groups that participate, but when the groups protested in front of the municipal authorities were blaming the guiris (the popular racist slur for white foreigners from northern Europe and North America)
* Some of the street displays were blatantly xenophobic; one about Catalan viniculture had “Miris on miris tots són guiris” (“Wherever you look, they’re all guiris” in Catalan) painted on one of the paper-maché wine barrels.
I fear that it’s only going to get worse. To the surprise of absolutely nobody in this sub, scores of apartments [have disappeared](https://www.eleconomista.es/vivienda-inmobiliario/noticias/13264695/03/25/situacion-dramatica-en-cataluna-el-tope-al-alquiler-destruye-un-cuarto-de-la-oferta-y-330-familias-se-pelean-por-cada-vivienda.html) after the new rent-control measures that were passed, and the NIMBYs will see rent prices rising as a sign that they need to be even *more* hostile to the tourists.