Tourism-phobia in Barcelona: dismantling discursive strategies and power games in the construction of a sustainable tourist city

ABSTRACT

Since hosting the Olympics in 1992, Barcelona has enjoyed a privileged position in the competitive city rankings, with a dizzying growth in tourist numbers and a tourism industry that considers itself a frontrunner in economic development, resilient to crises while generating jobs and wealth. In recent years, however, this thriving sector and model city have been threatened by a phenomenon that has been labelled tourism-phobia. The negative impacts of tourism are beginning to create a general malaise in the city, which translates into a hatred of tourism and/or the tourist. Various social movements now hold protests and demonstrations calling for a decrease in tourism and the municipal administration itself has established forms of control over the sector. Barcelona has become a laboratory for pioneering measures, political programmes and radical management strategies to build a new model of tourist city. Taking Michel Foucault’s theory as a basis, this paper analyses how the multi-actor device of tourism-phobia that makes up the tourist city has been constructed, identifying the relevant power networks and their discourses. The elements involved in the ‘tourism-phobic Barcelona’ scenario are characterized in order to better understand the obstacles to achieving sustainable tourism linked to the millennium goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism-phobia
• degrowth
• tourism impacts
• tourist city
• discourse analysis
• residents’ social movements
• Barcelona

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Silvana Pirillo Ramos Master’s degree in Political Sociology and Doctor's degree in Social Sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brasil. Associate Professor at the Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil in the areas of Planning, Tourism Management and Public Policy. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Girona (UdG), Spain. Member of several international Social Sciences and Tourism research networks, including the Multidisciplinary Research Laboratory in Tourism (LMRT-UdG). Coordinator, since 2010, of the Transdisciplinary Observational Group of Touristic Research at the Federal University of Alagoas. Scientific Editor of the Journal ‘Revista Iberoamericana de Turismo’ (RITUR).

Lluis Mundet Master’s degree in Leisure and Tourism Studies from the University of Ghent (Flanders, Belgium). PhD in Geography from the University of Girona. Associate Professor and member of the Multidisciplinary Research Laboratory in Tourism (LMRT). Since 1998 he has taught at the University of Girona’s Faculty of Tourism, from 2002 onwards working on postgraduate studies, teaching on the European Master’s in Tourism Management (the European Union’s only Erasmus Mundus programme in tourism), the Master’s in Tourism Management and Planning (which he was also coordinator of for two years) and the Master’s in Cultural Tourism. He’s currently also the coordinator of the PhD Programme in Tourism. He has also taught at several Universities in Europe (Finland, Germany, Norway, Slovakia) South America (Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba) Africa (Ethiopia) and Asia (China). Co editor of the Journal ‘Revista Iberoamericana de Turismo’ (RITUR).