„Touristen wollen auch eine authentische Stadt, keinen Themenpark“: Der Sanierungsplan, der La Rambla den Einwohnern Barcelonas zurückgeben soll
https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-09-21/tourists-also-want-an-authentic-city-not-a-theme-park-the-redevelopment-plan-that-seeks-to-give-la-rambla-back-to-barcelona-residents.html
Von Logibenq
11 Comments
Oh, it’s what tourists want that’s important, is it?
Tourists SAY they want an ‘authentic’ city – but WANT it to be suitably processed for ease of use, access and interest.
Anyway, Barcelona is still an ‘authentic’ city, its an authentic tourist city.
Back when I was living in Barcelona, La Rambla was one of those streets I’d avoid at all costs. Dirty, crowded, some of the worst restaurants (bad food + overpriced), pickpockets, and the evening special was prostitutes and drug dealers. It wasn’t a theme park, it was a cesspool.
They can renovate as much as they want, but as long as they don’t use the police to actually permanently remove the pickpockets, drug dealers, prostitutes and other undesirables, it will just turn into cesspool v2.
Then they should get the fuck out of the way when locals are trying to walk in their city. All tour groups should be banished. Sorry not sorry …
” seeks to rescue the Catalan capital’s most emblematic promenade from excessive tourism and gentrification”
Yep, that’s the problem! Not the pickpockets, the scammers and the bad restaurants.
YES! Coming from Portugal and seeing Algarve turned into something completely non-Portuguese, it has me mind blown. Why would you visit a country and not want to interact with its food and culture??
Las Ramblas is lost, it was nice passing by during the COVID era but it is now back to tourist flow.
Residents have now other ways to enjoy the city, a big new avenue free of tourist trap. Only sad thing is it probably not going to last long…
Unless Barcelona/Spain rips up its EU agreements and turns itself into an isolationist country like Bhutan – and dynamiting its tourism-dependent economy along the way – there’s no way that it can make Las Ramblas attractive to the locals without drawing tourists there, especially given that the promenade is in the center of the historic part of the city. Investing all this money into renewal of the area is making it more valuable by definition, and like New York City’s Highline trail, what’s likely to happen is that the “gentrification” and crowding will only increase, especially given that making the area more pedestrian-friendly is going to mean more space for people to walk.
Hot take, but I don’t care what tourists want, I care what people actually living there want.
If it’s looking anything like that digital recreation, then yikes. Looks awful.
getting rid of all the sidewalk “vendors” would be a great start.