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