After huge scale anti-tourism protests over the summer, Barcelona is attempting to show a detrimental right into a optimistic by spending among the cash raised from the town’s tax on guests to deal with points attributable to local weather change.
Barcelona is among the most visited cities in Europe, and for a lot of of Barcelona’s 1.6 million residents, tourism is seen as the explanation for a rising variety of issues, like a housing scarcity, rising costs and altering neighborhoods.
“The city cloth is totally destroyed,” Barcelona resident Fernando advised CBS News. He lives in a neighborhood that’s widespread amongst vacationers for its eating places and bars.
“This space significantly, you understand, I’ve lived right here for over 20 years and it is simply, slowly getting, like, soulless. I might say 50% of the buildings are right here only for short-term use, you understand, for leases,” he mentioned.
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“If it was like fascinating cultural inventive and these sorts of purchasers, that will be a lot better for everyone,” Barcelona resident Elizabeth, who works at a resort, advised CBS News. “But individuals who come just for celebration, drink and simply not caring for the town. That is the issue.”
But Barcelona is amongst a lot of southern European cities dealing with one other downside: the more and more excessive results of local weather change. In current years, it has develop into dryer and hotter, and there have been intense and dangerous heat waves and draughts.
The rising temperatures have develop into an issue for metropolis infrastructure like public faculties, lots of which don’t have air con, as the acute warmth of summer time extends into the college 12 months.
At one Barcelona public faculty, 11-year-old scholar Mia advised CBS News that she struggles to pay attention when it is scorching.
“It’s very arduous,” she mentioned.
Her classmate Theo agreed.
“Sometimes if you’re like, within the class, and also you simply got here out enjoying soccer, it is very popular,” Theo mentioned.
But this 12 months, for the primary time, Mia and Theo have air con at school, after a system was put in over the summer time. It was paid for utilizing cash raised from Barcelona’s vacationer tax — a small price charged to guests.
“The vacationer tax is what the vacationers that go to our metropolis pay when they’re in a resort or in a touristic condominium,” Barcelona’s Deputy Mayor Laia Bonet advised CBS News. “The chance of utilizing these revenues, the tourism tax, for such a undertaking is essential in order that we are able to settle for tourism in our metropolis and the position that tourism has.”
Barcelona’s City Hall has launched a program to put in vitality environment friendly warmth pumps and photo voltaic panels in the entire metropolis’s 170 public faculties over six years. The purpose is to offer air con whereas additionally decarbonizing by changing previous, gas-powered heating techniques. It is investing the equal of round $100 million within the undertaking, all of which it says, is coming from the vacationer tax.
“I feel it is one of the best ways to hyperlink tourism to… the required combat in opposition to local weather change,” Bonet mentioned, including that the vacationer tax funding for this system is “a vital assist.”
“It makes the distinction,” Bonet mentioned.
But anti-tourism activist Agnes Rodriguez says in utilizing cash raised from vacationers, the town is lacking the purpose.
“The authorities must be doing this with out relying on tourism … it is public well being,” Rodriguez advised CBS News. “If you are coming to Barcelona tonight, to Chicago or to New York, and also you’re staying in a vacationer condominium the place a household must be residing, you might be a part of this metropolis altering. You’re affecting the life of individuals residing there.”
Rodriguez says that Barcelona residents, not vacationers, must be on the middle of the town’s combat in opposition to local weather change.
“We will not be a theme park. We will not be Disney World. So we need to carry on being a metropolis and with the ability to reside right here,” she mentioned.
