Barcelona’s Sustainable Tourism Commissioner Vows to Curb Overtourism

After decades of aggressively marketing its vibrant Mediterranean image, Barcelona authorities have appointed a commissioner tasked with saying “no more” – and, he says, to return the city’s most iconic market to local residents.

Last year, the Barcelona area attracted 26 million visitors, a 2.4% increase from 2024. The appointment of José Antonio Donaire as the city’s first commissioner for sustainable tourism marks a significant policy shift, moving away from viewing tourism as an unalloyed benefit to recognizing it alienates citizens and erodes the Catalan capital’s identity.

“We’ve reached the end of the road; Barcelona has reached the maximum number of tourists it can accommodate,” Donaire said. “We don’t want more tourists, not even one more, but we need to manage those we have.”

It may take time for Donaire’s proposed changes to take effect, not least because other actors beyond city control – including the port, airport, airlines, hoteliers, and the travel industry – may not share the same goals.

But his sincerity and ambition are undeniable, extending even to rescuing Barcelona’s famous La Boquería market, emblematic of mass tourism’s worst impacts on the city’s identity.

La Boquería, once a haven for chefs and foodies but now avoided by most residents, will return to selling fresh food rather than takeaway snacks, which will be banned with support from the majority of stallholders, Donaire said.

“Within a year you’ll see the new Boquería,” he said.

The city’s attempt to curb visitor numbers began in 2017 with a moratorium on new hotel construction in central Barcelona, but that was largely undermined by a rapid surge in short-term tourist apartments listed on sites such as Airbnb.

In 2028, licenses for Barcelona’s 10,000 legal tourist apartments will be revoked, and the city council hopes most of these properties will return to the rental market, alleviating the housing crisis.

Donaire acknowledged this has not been the case in New York City, which effectively banned tourist apartments in 2022 without a subsequent increase in rentals, but said Barcelona has plans to incentivize landlords to return properties to the market.

“At the moment, the housing stock is growing by 2,000 homes a year,” he said. “If we can get those 10,000 tourist apartments on the residential market, it’s the equivalent of five years’ growth.”

Donaire, an eloquent speaker known for tartan waistcoats who previously served as a professor at the University of Girona and director of its tourism research institute, said the new policies aim not just to reduce numbers but to change visitor profiles and behavior.

About 65% of visitors are classified as “leisure tourists,” while the rest come for conferences or as “cultural visitors” attracted by museums, architecture, and music festivals.

He said the goal is to reduce leisure tourists to achieve an equal three-way split among leisure, culture, and business visitors. Other measures include reducing cruise ship berths from seven to five, though the city will still receive over three million cruise passengers annually.

These visitors spend little ashore and, as Donaire put it, “create more problems than benefits.”

Another group unaffected by restrictions on city center hotels and tourist lets is the seven million annual day-trippers, most arriving by coach. Barcelona has increased parking fees and forced coaches to park on the periphery to reduce numbers.

About half of Barcelona’s tourists are repeat visitors who have already seen main attractions. Donaire plans to encourage this group to take day trips outside the city or visit areas like Montjuïc, a large park with museums but few residents.

“What we don’t want is to encourage tourism in areas that aren’t prepared for it and where it will create problems,” he said.

Barcelona is also, not for the first time, clamping down on antisocial behavior, including a ban on organized pub crawls. “We’re not interested in this type of tourism and we want it to disappear,” Donaire said. The city plans to invest part of the recently increased tourist tax into the city center to bolster local commerce in areas now dominated by convenience stores, souvenir shops, and cannabis dispensaries.

Such proposals will likely face skepticism, especially since the “quality over quantity” refrain is not new, but Donaire and his backers hope that after 30 years of tourism boom, the balance may tip back in favor of Barcelona’s residents. “Many citizens feel the city center no longer belongs to them,” Donaire said. Can he be the man to give it back to them?