A report indicates that despite the fact that the number of ships remains the same, the number of passengers has grown by 7% per year since 2015 and may go from 3.1 million visitors in 2019 to 3.5 in 2030
Ada Colau continues to put the bow to the cruisers. Her government has been demanding for a long time that she limit her arrival in Barcelona and this Thursday she has done it again. The Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning, Janet Sanzand the councilman of, Eloi Badiahave appeared to warn that the phenomenon threatens to multiply if it is not stopped.
It is a thesis that is based on theReport on externalities of ship traffic in the Port of Barcelona’, presented at the appearance and drawn up by the Strategic Office of the Coastal Area and by Barcelona Regional. On the part of these organisms, respectively, they have participated in the appearance Jordi Campillooffice coordinator, and Marc Montellodirector of sustainability at Barcelona Regional.
Janet Sanz affirms that next week the table will meet on the subject with the Catalan Government, the Ministry of Transport and the port
Sanz and Badia have stressed that since 2015 the number of passengers on these vessels has grown at an annual rate of 7%, until reaching in 2019, the year before the pandemic and a year in which tourism figures were very high, a record number of cruise passengers: 3.1 million. At peak times, the city welcomes 25,000 cruise passengers in a single day. The case, explained Campillo, is that the number of ships has not grown since 2010. Around 800 per year. But as they have increased their capacity, more cruise passengers do arrive in Barcelona.
“The objective is to have the most up-to-date data possible to establish a regulation that supposes a limitation as seen in Palma, in Dubrovnik or Venice. Barcelona has to join that group of cities & rdquor ;, affirmed Sanz.
An “unsustainable” activity
“The report makes a clear x-ray of the situation and makes one thing very clear: the current rate of growth in tourism is unsustainable. Both for environmental reasons and because of crowds, we have to set limits & rdquor ;, added the deputy mayor.
Eloi Badia: “Cruise passengers disembark with herd logic and make very intensive use of public space”
Campillo has argued that tourism returns “with the same virulence and intensity as in 2019”: “Despite 2022 being a year of transition, there are days of six and seven cruises in the city”. The specialist recalled that one of the problems is that passengers on transit cruises, who spend a few hours in the city, leave around 50 euros per day in Barcelona, while those on ships with origin and destination in the Catalan capital spend between 200 and 250 euros per day. Until 2019, he continued, there were more cruise passengers of origin and destination. “This has changed & rdquor ;, he added. He has also specified that the majority of cruise passengers do not get on the Gran Via. El Gòtic, Eloi Badia has affirmed, doubles its population on the days when there is a greater presence of cruise passengers.
More than 15,000
Montelló has estimated that there are more than 15,000 cruise passengers in Barcelona at 55 days a year. In 40% of the days there are more than 10,000, that is, from two to three cruise ships. Until the pandemic, Barcelona was the port with the most visitors in Europe and the fifth internationally.
Something that is also relevant, indicates the Colau government, is that the high season is concentrated in the months from May to October, a period in which up to 400,000 cruise passengers can visit the city.
An insufficient agreement
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Sanz has said that in view of the data, the limitation of terminals that was agreed with the Port of Barcelona in 2018 was “necessary but insufficient”. On the pressure that visitors exert in public space. Badia has recounted that on high season days hoh, to empty the litter bins on the Rambla 14 times a day, when in other non-crowded spaces it is done once. The mayor has stressed that cruise passengers “land with herd logic and make a very intensive use of public space.”
Sanz has announced that next week the table on cruises requested by the mayor will meet and in which, in addition to the city council, the Catalan Government, the Ministry of Transport and the Port of Barcelona will participate.