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Thanks for the local perspective! I get the feeling MWC is a bit of a scapegoat here, tough.

> When MWC is ocurring in Barcelona, public transport (subway) goes on strike (because of the maximum impact).

So won't they just choose any other date with the next highest impact for their strike now? Why is that better?

> BCN is already overloaded with tourism, events like MWC only make it worse for those of us that live there.

100.000 visitors for 4 days, that must be less than 1% of Barcelona's hotel nights/year. It's also happening during off-season, so shouldn't lead to more housing capacity being taken away from the locals.

I get when people complain about the Olympics in their city or other costly events with unclear rewards, but this seems pretty harmless?

4 days in 365 is already 1%. If it was less, it would be relatively empty.

1% of visits to Barcelona is 50k[1]. So 100k more is a 3 fold increase.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona#Tourism 5.5M in 2011, it must be much more now.

You never really know what you've got till it's gone. A hundred thousand visitors eating, drinking, commuting, sightseeing, dwelling, and flying about in your city in a short period of time.....for many cities that would be a welcome occurrence (apart from the traffic woes).

It's about $500m Euros of revenue, and I saw an estimate of something like 15k part-time jobs due to MWC. No small thing.

I suppose white collar workers who don’t rent out on airbnb don’t see any of that revenue. You could make an argument that they benefit indirectly when their local economy gets a boost and you’d probably be right.

But most people will look at the misery of temporary overcrowding, look at their bank account and think “no, I don’t want this” without considering second order effects.

Yes he will be complaining about the municipality not having enough funds for keeping the streets clean after a few years.

I'm also in BCN and everyone always says that but I'm not sure I buy it.

I mean, yeah, some guys benefit from having the MWC for sure but I'm not sure most residents do - I'm not letting out flats or running venues etc. I'm trying to get to work on time and pay my rent.

It reminds me of the similar arguments people make about the big cruise ships that come here - I mean sure, it massively benefits tourist attractions and restaurants etc. but most citizens don't see any of that money, they just get lungfuls of air pollution.

Do you understand how economics works? When money from outside your city is spent in your city, that is a huge net benefit to everyone.

That money doesn't come for free. It's perfectly rational for people who don't directly benefit from a lot of visitors--but are inconvenienced by them--to wish to forgo both the visitors and the money they spend/taxes they bring in.

> that is a huge net benefit to everyone.

This isn't necessarily true though.

Honestly, the MWC doesn't bother me that much - yeah the metro always goes on strike but that's a problem with the metro unions and the Ayuntamiento not the MWC in my opinion.

But take the case of the cruise ships which do irritate me - every citizen gets to suffer worse air quality so a few can enrich themselves on the tourist money.

I understand that in theory that money might 'trickle down' to the citizenry at large, but it is far from obvious that this actually occurs sufficiently to compensate the downsides.

Isn't the sales tax in Barcelona 21%? Seems like it would be a big influx to the city's coffers that could theoretically provide it the means to do something like pay subway workers more and alleviate the need to strike in the first place.

If the money's not being spent in the right place, that's a local political issue that can't solved by anyone except the locals (e.g. those who can vote).

It is very trendy for Barcelona residents (I am one also) to moan about the MWC or ‘gentrification’.

It is less trendy to complain about the relatively low unemployment and well-maintained civic infrastructure; both of which are boosted by a strong international business presence which employs a lot of people and brings a lot of wealth to the city.

Losing that international presence risks turning the city back to the dirty, poor, backwater it was in the 80s. If living with a couple of major international events a year is the alternative, I know which one I’d choose.

I think the cancellation of the MWC is a disaster for the city, not just in terms of short term economic loss, but in terms of longer term strategy, as the MWC is already muttering about following other events to Madrid or elsewhere.

Canceling due to a pandemic should not affect the long term

I find it unfair to call it moaning as is if its a childish reaction. Most of my friends can no longer afford to live in the city itself with their non-IT jobs. The gentrification process is a real thing happening right now with very real consequences.

I guess that MWC is not the problem per se. And it is part of the reason of the exploding international presence at least in the IT sector. But it is part of the problem of the worsening in the quality of life for many people.

My argument is that much of the wealth generated by tourism doesn't necessarily benefit citizens of Barcelona. I'm sure a lot of people are getting a lot of benefits, but I'm not sure it is the people that need it the most.

Where does that attitude towards tourism come from?

I know this is politics but other places would welcome tourism and professional conferences with open arms.

When I see a group of tourists cueing in front of something in Copenhagen - sure - I might get annoyed but those people are bringing in money. Not to me personally. But that tourist money gets taxed or spent again. And ultimately it ends up being spent on a nicer park or causes some new cool restaurant to be viable, all benifical to me.

Eventhough we have extreme political parties here; noone is bad-mouthing tourism. Everyone knows we live of trade and we need to be an open and welcoming place; and it is out own problem to make sure our public transport can handle its peak traffic.

Really, I'm all for responsible tourism. Tourism is very good for the local economy when it is done properly. But it must come with regulation to avoid encouraging foreign companies (or local, doesn't matter) buying all houses/apartments and then renting them mainly to tourists for a much higher price than locals can pay. Since Barcelona hosts a very high volume of tourists, they can afford to do this almost the whole year.

Please understand, I'm not complaining about tourists (although they come with their own problems, like a 24/7 unwelcome festive ambient in residential neighborhoods...), I'm complaining on how Barcelona is not able to absorb that massive amount of tourism and how it makes lives miserable for local residents, that are pushed out of the city because it is far more beneficial to land-owners to rent to tourists, and how restaurants/shops push prices up too, and how the center of the city is no longer targeted towards locals. And much of the city center's businesses are no longer locally-owned and bring outside supply chains and may employ non local people, so it is not even that beneficial to the community as a whole.

Yes, jobs are created, but tourism-related jobs are not famous for their ability for employees to be able to live in the city itself.

I know this is a local politics problems, one of electing people that will do the right thing, but it's not that easy unfortunately, since voting in spain is very polarized on ideological and tribal feelings. And meanwhile, locals will just suffer the negative aspect of all this while benefiting little.

From what I've read about Barcelona, it's more like living in a Disneyland, every day you're just swimming in crowds of tourists, from all over the world, bringing their idiosyncrasies. All (or a lot) of the shops are shops selling touristic trinkets. Want to eat at that nice restaurant? It's crowded, with loud Americans and Brits. 7 nights a week...

Yes, having lived in Barcelona for 2 years I can confirm that.

Winter was the best time there

Part of it is that some of the people experiencing the downsides of tourism aren't getting adequate benefits from it. Or perhaps don't see how they're benefiting even though they do.

This is what politics is all about.

#agree and have you ever asked yourself why no politician charges these guys (organizers) so at least locals could take something back from it