‘We don’t want to be Venice’: Barcelona battles an influx of tourists

For supporters of the mayor of Barcelona, a T-shirt speaks volumes. “It’s all Ada Colau’s fault,” reads the slogan printed on the garment, with Yoko Ono’s name crossed out.

It’s a joke, of course, worn by the left-wing supporters of Colau (49), the mayor of Barcelona since 2015, during the campaign ahead of this Sunday’s local election. It plays on the idea that she has become not just a scapegoat for the Catalan capital’s challenges – which include housing problems, mass tourism and petty crime – but a convenient hate figure for certain residents.

Begona Gómez Urzaiz noted in the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia that there was a “visceral, vitriolic” rejection of the mayor which “is less to do with her tenure and her political ideas than with her origins, her gender, the way she talks and even her hair.”

Nonetheless, in a tight race, Colau could still secure a third term. She has said that the T-shirt “refers to the campaign, including… fake news, that certain economic powers are waging against the city’s government”.

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What nobody can dispute is that we didn’t come here just to bide our time but to implement a different urban model

—  Ada Colau

She added: “There may be people who disagree with our ideas for the city and that’s legitimate and normal. What nobody can dispute is that we didn’t come here just to bide our time but to implement a different urban model, more fair, more democratic and feminist.”

When she first took office, Colau was known as an activist rather than a politician. As Spain had reeled from the euro-zone crisis, many younger people took to the streets to protest against austerity, corruption and a shortage of affordable housing. It was in response to the lack of affordable housing that Colau became the most prominent figure in the country’s anti-eviction movement, which would demonstrate against, or even block, foreclosures of properties by banks when owners were no longer able to pay their mortgage.

That activism gave Colau a platform from which to launch her successful bid to become mayor of Barcelona in 2015 as part of a wave of victories for Spain’s new left. Her party, Barcelona En Comú, has governed the city in a coalition that includes Podemos.

She took office on a social justice platform that promised sweeping change for the city. However, the principal problems Barcelona faces now are similar to those it confronted eight years ago. As the summer approaches, the mass influx of tourism is arguably the most visible, although her administration insists that the situation has improved.

Clamping down

“Something we have managed to do is to stop the city’s decline [in this area],” Janet Sánchez, councillor for environment, urban space, mobility and infrastructure in city hall, told The Irish Times. “We don’t want to be Venice.”

Measures taken have included closing down 6,000 unlicensed tourist flats and limiting the availability of hotel rooms in certain areas of the city. If re-elected, Colau’s team plan to go further, aiming to halve the 400,000 cruise passengers who disembark in Barcelona’s port every month in high season, while clamping down further on tourist flats and souvenir shops.

Crime has proved equally difficult to manage. Barcelona continues to have a significantly higher crime rate than other large Spanish cities. Meanwhile, a fierce debate over squatting has dragged attention away from Colau’s substantial social housing initiatives.

The debate over Catalan independence has barely registered in this campaign, a fortunate development for Colau, whose support for self-determination but not secession made her a target for both separatists and unionists in the past

“The city in Colau’s mind is for pedestrians, it’s green, accessible and pro-cycling, inclusive, feminist, safe and multicultural, participative but not polemical, educated but not elitist, open but Catalan,” noted the writer Juan Soto Ivars. Describing her tenure as “a costly yet valuable experiment”, he said: “She hasn’t destroyed Barcelona, nor has she left it any worse than she found it.”#

On Sunday, regional and municipal elections will be held across Spain and the results in areas such as Madrid and Valencia will be keenly watched because of their potential significance for national politics.

However, Barcelona has its own political microclimate, with Catalan nationalist parties playing a key role. The debate over Catalan independence has barely registered in this campaign, a fortunate development for Colau, whose support for self-determination but not secession made her a target for both separatists and unionists in the past.

With the populist right rampant in Madrid, Barcelona remains a bastion of the ideals of the new left that emerged nearly a decade ago but whose grip on power has been slipping in recent years.

Return to activism

Polls show Colau’s Barcelona en Comú in a virtual three-way tie with the Socialists, with whom she has governed until now, and the pro-independence conservatives of Together for Catalonia (JxCat). To remain office, the mayor would again need the support of at least one other party.

[ Spanish parliament probes deep-state attempts to smear Catalan separatists ]

If re-elected, Colau has said she will leave politics after another term to return to activism.

“When you’re involved in activism, you’re with people who think like you and you don’t need to associate with those who don’t,” she said. “When you’re mayor you have to associate with everyone.”