Raül Valls: “Tourism only generates wealth for a few pockets”

A few days ago, all media outlets highlighted that Catalonia has broken a new tourist record in 2024, with nearly twenty million visitors. Is this good news, considering the impacts and consequences of the current tourism model? We discuss this with Raül Valls, a researcher at Alba Sud, a research and communication center for development that focuses on studying tourism from critical perspectives.

Valls delves into the negative effects of the process of touristification that many cities, such as Barcelona, are experiencing while warning that the necessary tourism degrowth should not translate into a tourism model exclusively for elites.

What is Alba Sud?

We are a research center that has been operating since 2008. Initially, we were a cooperation NGO, but soon we began working on analyzing the impacts of Spanish tourism capital investments in Latin America, particularly in the Caribbean and Central America. This led us to reflect on this tourism model exported from Spain under very questionable conditions, to countries where Spanish companies can do as they please. Thus, we monitor all these impacts while supporting local communities, which are often displaced by these tourism projects, resorts, etc.

You also delve into the working conditions generated by the tourism sector.

Yes, we soon delved deeply into this issue. In this regard, we published a book about the Kellys and have conducted various studies in this field. Therefore, we have been progressing and have practically established ourselves as a center for tourism model critique. In recent years, especially since the pandemic, we have taken a further step toward considering possible alternatives to this model.

You want to make it clear that you are not against tourism…

Our position is not anti-tourism. We are against touristification, these processes that often end up being negative for the natural environment and for people. Every day, we hear news about these negative effects. From this critical perspective, we are working on how to reconstruct and rethink tourism: We see it as not just a sector of business developed by capitalism but also a human need for rest, health, experiences, and cultural growth.

And therefore, we should not give it up.

Of course not. The issue to be addressed is how this tourism should be in the context of the ecological transition we must undertake and how it commits to social justice. Because not everyone can afford tourism. In fact, only 20% of humanity can afford international travel; in Europe, 30% of the population cannot afford a week of vacation per year… So, we are working from this critical perspective but also proposing alternatives.

What do we mean by touristification, and why do you prefer to use this concept?

Touristification implies a process where tourism ends up colonizing all aspects of life in a city or a territory and completely conditions all dynamics that occur. In Barcelona, we already had tourism after 1992, but since 2010, we have been experiencing a process of hypertouristification, understood as the breaking of territorial boundaries and the emergence of issues such as the displacement of local residents or changes in commercial models, where everything is geared toward tourism. For example, we no longer have grocery stores, but we have far more ice cream parlors or restaurants than we need as a city.

This can be seen in many neighborhoods of the city.

I have personally lived almost my entire life in Poblenou, and I have seen firsthand how the neighborhood’s Rambla has transformed from a local promenade, with some tourism at certain times, into a touristified space where it is now difficult to walk, where terraces occupy all the space, and all businesses are aimed at tourists. Touristification is this colonization of territory—it is tourism taken to extremes that are very negative. It is all a matter of balance, and it is evident that this balance has been lost.

Today, tourism is no longer confined to certain areas.

I remember that the first protests and complaints against tourism came from the neighborhood association of Sagrada Família, but it was a very localized and specific issue, related to buses and the flow of people in the area. However, given the Sagrada Família’s iconic status, it was an issue that could more or less be managed. The problem is that those issues have now spread to many more neighborhoods, such as Barceloneta or Poblenou.

The feeling is that tourism is becoming increasingly invasive in people’s daily lives.
 

That is the problem. And let me tell you another personal anecdote. Part of my family has always lived in a rented apartment in the Clot-Camp de l’Arpa area. And now, in that building, there are already six or seven tourist apartments, with the consequences of noise, dirt, and pressure on tenants that this entails. Obviously, the owner prefers seasonal rentals because they are more profitable and has no interest in keeping long-term tenants. On the contrary, they might even pressure them to leave.

The consequences extend to sensitive issues such as housing.

Exactly, and what impact is more significant in people's lives than housing? We recently saw the case of Casa Orsola, for example. Besides that, there are all the effects on businesses, the inability to move through the streets peacefully… We are facing a clear difficulty in coexisting with this phenomenon—a runaway tourism that creates very tough situations for the population and directly affects their daily lives.

Let’s delve deeper into these impacts.

To begin with, housing is one of the most severe issues arising. There is also the matter of commercial transformations affecting neighborhoods, leading to the loss of certain services, generalized price increases, and ultimately, the possibility of being directly displaced from one’s neighborhood or city. In this sense, Barcelona is a textbook case of hypertouristification.

 

 

At the end of the eighties, there was a certain consensus that Barcelona could not be industrial and that there could not be factories within the city. Now, we have moved to the other extreme: an entire service-based city has been created, which has ultimately been oriented towards tourism. That is why, provocatively, I say that Barcelona should return to industry. I am not talking about large factories, but, of course, if you have no other alternative than tourism, it will grow. Tourism is like gas: if you leave it unchecked, it expands uncontrollably.

We cannot depend on tourism.

The firewalls against this are other economic alternatives, and these must involve industry—bringing back small workshops and small factories within the city. The complaint is that factories make noise and cause inconvenience, but are they more disruptive than what tourism currently generates in several neighborhoods of Barcelona? It is clear that we have gone too far with tourism. And this all started in 1986 when we were awarded the Olympics.

When tourism is criticized, the economic argument is always brought up—the wealth that tourism generates.

One of the things we analyze is precisely how positive these effects are for the people who live and work in this sector. There are many myths surrounding this. Does tourism create jobs? Yes, but in many cases, these are precarious, temporary, poorly paid, low-quality jobs with unbearable working hours. So much so that one of the problems the sector has faced in recent times is finding workers. They ask, shocked, how it is possible that they cannot find waiters or professionals to work. Well, maybe if they improved working conditions, more people would be willing to work there.

Not everyone benefits from this wealth.

The myth of tourism-generated wealth should be measured against objective data, provided by the system itself. A fully tourism-based city like Lloret de Mar ranks among the poorest cities in Catalonia. Therefore, the wealth generated by tourism most likely only ends up in a few pockets—those of large tourism operators and major hotel companies—not in the hands of the people.

There are many examples of this.

Mallorca is another clear case, where 40% of the GDP comes from tourism. We are talking about over-tourism-affected territories where precariousness, poverty, and low incomes are highly evident. So, the link between tourism and wealth is highly debatable.

Besides, it is an unstable sector.

If the pandemic made anything clear, it was the vulnerability of this tourism model because it depends on tourists coming from abroad. As a result, it is subject to dynamics that we often cannot control. We are talking about models that foster impoverishment, are precarious, and have a very poor redistribution of income.

When COVID arrived, tourism was the first sector to collapse.

This vulnerability makes it highly sensitive to unexpected situations like a pandemic, a war, or changes in preferred destinations for any reason. This creates great uncertainty, in addition to the fact that jobs in the sector are often not easily transferable to other fields. As Margarida Ramis, a colleague at Alba Sud, says, it is not true that we live off tourism; rather, tourism lives off us. Moreover, it is a sector that constantly demands infrastructure, facilities, and favors from public administrations—in other words, from us. It wants us to foot the bill for the party under the excuse that it creates jobs, which, on top of everything, are precarious and have no future.

And we haven’t even discussed the environmental impacts it causes…

This is an absolutely crucial issue that we place at the center of our critique of the model and the necessary search for alternatives. Tourism is based on mobility, primarily through airplanes and large cruise ships. All of this is happening in a context of ecological crisis and global warming, where mobility will have to be reduced or transformed into much more sustainable forms. I say this in the sense that cars, planes, and cruise ships are being questioned today. Beyond that, tourism also triggers changes in many territories, such as the disappearance of mangroves in Central America or the conversion of agricultural land into urban land.

Where do we need to go from here?

All of this leads us to a word that many do not like: degrowth. And tourism degrowth does not mean the disappearance of tourism; rather, it implies a transformation, because the current model is unsustainable. Can we maintain this hypermobility, which is, in any case, limited to a small portion of humanity that can afford it? Ecologically, this is not feasible. The ecological issue plays a fundamental role when discussing the rethinking of tourism.

Won’t this path lead to the elitization of tourism?

That is another issue because one of the proposed solutions to this model’s problems is reducing the number of tourists and moving towards what is called higher-quality tourism—which is just another way of saying elite tourism. Here, we touch on a key factor that is very important to Alba Sud: social justice. That is, transitioning towards post-capitalist forms of tourism and leisure.

Let’s develop this idea.

Clearly, in the capitalist context, tourism degrowth means returning to pre-World War II tourism, which was only accessible to elites. We believe this is not desirable because we understand that there have been significant advances in equality and economic democracy that indicate we should move towards more egalitarian models. Therefore, it would not be acceptable for the solution to this crisis to be a tourism model only for the rich, returning to a situation where people cannot leave their cities, as was the case a hundred years ago.

And how can we avoid this?

It may sound like an empty statement, but we are talking about the need for a radical socio-economic model change. If that does not happen, we will inevitably move towards a tourism model for the few. Moreover, this elite tourism has another problem, which Ernest Cañada, the coordinator of Alba Sud, often points out: there are not enough rich people for everyone. If we all specialize in so-called quality tourism, there will not be enough wealthy people to sustain it.

What about sustainable or responsible tourism? Is that possible?

These are concepts that have emerged, and after carefully analyzing them at Alba Sud, we feel they are more about segmentation. That is, certain people do not want to engage in a particular type of tourism and want it framed as sustainable or responsible tourism, but this is highly debatable. One of the most well-known cases was nature tourism in Costa Rica, which was supposedly respectful of the environment.
 

And isn’t it?

What we need to ask ourselves is whether it is sustainable to take a plane and fly from Barcelona to Costa Rica. I think it is not. Even if you go to a place where you are in contact with local communities, where the hotel has all kinds of water recycling systems and runs on solar panels. The crux of the matter is that the sustainability of the model is not based on how the hotel operates, but rather that the unsustainable factor is the distance. Therefore, sustainable and responsible tourism are nothing more than euphemisms.

There’s little that can be done about distance...

In the end, responsibility and sustainability will depend on a more local form of tourism, where travel will have to be done using other means, such as trains, and over a much longer period of time. The idea of flying to the Caribbean for a week should neither be possible nor desirable, but perhaps taking a train and traveling across Europe for several weeks could be.

This would require many other changes.

Yes, in vacation systems, for example. Perhaps we need to think about longer vacations, sabbatical years, or ways in which we don’t have to stop traveling but also don’t take four flights a year and cross half the planet in just a few days. We will have to move towards much longer, slower travel models, where the idea of truly experiencing another country, another culture, and other people becomes real. A time will come when we will have no other choice. If we do not question the capitalist system and its logic, it is clear that we will end up with tourism only for the rich.