CITY NOT FOR SALE: RECLAIMING BARCELONA IN THE WAKE OF TOURISM MASSIFICATION ____________________________________ A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University _______________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology ______________________________________ By Stacie Carlton April 2019 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Smoki Musuraj for her advice and support. I would also like to thank the Provost Undergraduate Research Fund for their part in helping my fieldwork in Barcelona. I owe this project to the people and organizations who listened to my questions and allowed me to participate in their lives. Thank you. i Abstract This study explores how the lives of residents living in Barcelona, Spain are influenced by the phenomenon of “overtourism.” This word, like the phrase tourism massification, expresses the idea that tourism has grown to be an unsustainable and potentially destructive force in the city. Since the city was put on the map after the 1992 Olympic Games, it has been successful at transforming the urban environment to attract evermore tourists, numbering 32 million in 2018. Some of the city’s 1.1 million residents have been expressed their dissatisfaction with tourism’s effects on the city through protests, demonstrations, and activism. This ethnographic study involving two months of semi-structured interviews and participant observation investigates tourism through its impact on the spaces of the city and the residents who inhabit them. In doing so I claim residents’ relationship with their city and to each other is impacted by tourism’s spatial effects. I demonstrate how residential life is challenged by tourism, but also how residents use activism to stake their claim to the city and the decisions which affect its development. I argue that these acts of resistance are important in reimagining how not only tourism, but cities in general, can be shaped to better serve the needs of residents ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. i Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... iv Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Aim and Scope .........................................................................................................4 On Tourism ..............................................................................................................6 On the City ...............................................................................................................8 On Space ................................................................................................................10 Methods..................................................................................................................11 Chapter Overviews.................................................................................................14 Chapter 1: The “Real” Barcelona(s) ..................................................................................17 Authenticity in Tourism .........................................................................................19 The Transformation of La Rambla .......................................................................20 Resident Authenticity.............................................................................................24 Killing the Clown ...................................................................................................26 Conclusion .............................................................................................................29 Chapter 2: Tourism or Neighborhood ................................................................................32 Selling the City ......................................................................................................34 The High Cost of Living in a “Successful” City....................................................38 Evictions ................................................................................................................40 Tourism Gentrification vs. Needs of Local Residents ...........................................43 Conclusion ............................................................................................................46 Chapter 3: Contested Publics of Parks and Gardens ..........................................................49 The Park ................................................................................................................50 Public-Private Partnerships ....................................................................................54 The Garden.............................................................................................................56 Conclusion .............................................................................................................61 Chapter 4: Reclaiming the City..........................................................................................63 Collective Organizing: Masses against Massification ...........................................65 Individual Activism: Getting Personal with Tourism ............................................72 Conclusion .............................................................................................................76 Epilogue .............................................................................................................................78 References ..........................................................................................................................81 iii List of Figures Figure 1 La Rambla in July, 2018 22 Figure 2 Graffiti in La Rambla depicting where to find “the 23 real” experience Figure 3 Tourists taking photos in front of La Boqueria 27 Market in La Rambla Figure 4 Banners hanging from apartments 32 Figure 5 Graffiti on a development project in Poblenou 37 Figure 6 Anti-eviction graffiti on a bank 41 Graffiti denouncing tourism 47 Figure 7 Figure 8 Resident photo of Park Guell under construction in 50 the early 1900s. Figure 9 Figure 9: The ticketing equipment for the entrance 52 to the monumental zone Figure 10 A neighborhood garden in Gracia 57 Figure 11 A garden in El Raval under threat of privatization 59 Figure 12 : Graffiti in L’Agora Juan Andres 60 Figure 13 A demonstration on the city’s housing crisis 65 Figure 14 Protest of hotel construction near El Raval and the 68 port of Barcelona Figure 15 Socrates and the tourist 73 Figure 16 Talking to tourists in Park Guell 75 Figure 17 Barcelona is not for sale 77 iv Introduction The Plaça (pronounced pla.sa) Sant Felip Neri in The Gothic Neighborhood is a crucial stop for tour groups in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, Spain. Finding the square almost requires the help of a guide; the winding maze of narrow streets makes it possible to lose yourself without finding the designated points of interests outlined in maps and guidebooks. It was here that Antoni Gaudi, the modernist architect who constructed many of the famous landmarks of the city went to church, and also where during the Spanish civil war, 42 people died during a bombing by Dictator Francisco Franco. The impressions of bombs in the stone facades are still visible, and tourists pose in front of them multiple times a day throughout the year. When I visited this square during my two months of field research in Barcelona, I saw few people who were not tour groups, photographers, diners at Relaix and Chauteaux, or schoolchildren on recess from the rebuilt school. On one occasion however, I attended a meeting of the local organization Fem Plaça, who brought residents together in this space to discuss the subject of tourism which has made itself such a visible presence in their daily lives. Fem Plaça means “we make the square,” but as one blog post written about the organization attests, residents do not only make squares in their occupation of public space. They are attempting to “make” the city (Ehrmann 2018). The organizers carted in dozens of folding chairs, and multiple people helped set them up in rows across from a larger table which served as a stage. The whole area was bounded by strings holding photographs of the organization’s activities, to mark off this rectangular space from the tour groups which filtered around us. We were here to listen to a social researcher named Augustín Cocola Gant who had undertaken a similar project to 1 mine 3 years earlier. He had interviewed residents of The Gothic Quarter to find out how their daily lives were influenced by tourism. He presented his findings, outlining common resident complaints like noise and mobility concerns, as well as the emotional impact tourism has on residents: making them feel they no longer belong in their city. But not everyone in this space was similarly attuned to his speech. In one especially tense moment, a tour group directly behind our corner of the square