At the beginning of February this year, the authorities declared a state of emergency due to the drought and introduced limits on water consumption – but they did not affect the tourism industry much.
“Apartments in Barcelona have gentle showers and the like. But many millions of people come here every year, and in terms of waste and water consumption, they behave the same as people 30 years ago.” Vicenç Acuña, director of the Catalan Water Research Institute, told Politico.
However, due to the importance of this industry for the economy of the region, the local authorities treat it with gloves. “There has been no pressure on the tourism sector to change,” Acuna added. Some thirty million people visit Barcelona annually (for comparison, Prague reported the maximum in 2019 – over eight million tourists). Economically, they are very important, but at the same time, there is a growing feeling among Spaniards, not only in Barcelona, that they are too much of a burden on public services and resources.
Barcelona knows how to save water
“The city and citizens have done their homework. If we look at household consumption alone, it is 99 liters per inhabitant per day,” said Deputy Mayor Laia Bonetová, responsible for urban planning and green transformation.
That’s a decent savings. In order for health not to suffer, a person needs 50-100 liters per person per day, according to the UN. The all-Spanish and European average is higher than the current Barcelona one. But tourists staying in local hotels flush two-thirds more: 163 liters.
It rained in April, so the authorities relaxed the emergency measures. However, some fear that too hastily: “It is absolute electoral irresponsibility. We are on the brink of the hottest summer on record and the government has lifted the state of emergency to scrape a few votes.” tweets media consultant Jordi Manlis. Journalist and politician Jéssica Albiachová, who is also running in the elections, indicates, that the government is mainly interested in hotel swimming pools – so that the tourist season does not suffer. Even after the rains, at the end of April, the reservoirs were not even a quarter full.
However, there are also voices that the criticism of tourists is being overdone, and that they are becoming scapegoats in debates about various problems. “These people think that tourists have more rights than ordinary citizens when it comes to drought. But you can’t introduce a law that will only target people coming to Barcelona or Catalonia,” Eduard Rivas, president of the Union of Catalan Municipalities, told Politico. He mainly blames the regional government for not investing in water infrastructure in the last decade and only now trying to catch up.
Disputes led to the fall of the government and early elections. Pere Aragonès ruled at the head of the minority cabinet, which lost the support of the opposition in March – allegedly because of the project of the giant resort Hard Rock Hotel & Casino for fifteen thousand guests. After disagreements, the head of the cabinet preferred to call new elections, writes the Catalan News portal.
“One of the main concerns is the huge amount of water that the casino would use,” says Dante Maschio Gastelaars, spokesperson for the Aïgua és Vida (Water is Life) campaign. And according to him, it is unsustainable to just increase the number of tourists in the region in this way. “We have to rethink our economy, we are a country of tourism and swimming pools,” he tells Politico.
