Barcelona Mayor Plans to Introduce Tourist Cap to Control Visitor Numbers

Barcelona's new mayor-elect has announced controversial plans for a cap on the number of tourists entering the Catalan capital.

Ada Colau, who won the mayorship last month, said she plans to implement an entry cap on tourists entering the Spanish city.

“If we don't want to end up like Venice, we will have to put some kind of limit in Barcelona,” she told El Pais newspaper in an interview on Monday. “We can grow more but I don't know how much more.”

In order to keep Barcelona from reaching its “saturation limit,” Colau wants a city-wide freeze on new developments for six months before deciding which areas of the city could take in more tourists.

Tourism in Barcelona has been rising steadily over the last 15 years. In 2000, 3.14 million visitors came to the city, while the latest numbers for 2013 reveal 7.57 million tourists. Over six million of those were non-Spaniards.

In April this year, the city announced a ban on tourists groups of more than 15 people in the iconic La Boqueria market on La Rambla boulevard.

The period between 8am and 3pm local time on Friday and Saturday is when locals do their weekly shopping, and it is believed security guards will be on hand to escort large tourist groups out of the area.

In September last year residents in Barcelona fed up with the hordes of tourists crowding their streets took their protest against mass tourism to one of the city's most famous landmarks.

Around 300 people organized a noisy demonstration around the Sagrada Familia to complain about the holidaymakers making their lives a misery. The number of tourists visiting Barcelona has more than tripled in the last 20 years.

Figures from 2013 showed Barcelona surpassed 7.5million tourists in 12 months for the first time in its history, with France, followed by the UK and then the US, topping the list of nationalities visiting the city.

Source: The Daily Mail