Barcelona wants to reduce the number of cruise ships docked in the city, which carry tens of thousands of British tourists every year.
The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), which represents cruise lines, predicts a record number of people could arrive in Barcelona, one of Europe’s busiest cruise ports, this year, up from 2.25 million in 2019.
The British were the third largest group of foreigners after the French and Americans who visited Barcelona last year.
Some 517,682 British holidaymakers stayed in the Mediterranean city last year, according to the Barcelona Tourism Observatory.
According to CLIA, about 45% of British cruise tourists choose to travel in the Mediterranean.
Janet Sanz, deputy mayor of the Barcelona city council and head of environmental policy, has written to the Spanish government and port authorities calling for “urgent” action to “counter the massive influx of cruise ship tourists.”
The authorities of the Catalan capital want to halve the number of cruise tourists per month from 400,000 to 200,000 people.
Locals complain that tourists often pay little attention to the city’s architectural splendor or artistic treasures. Instead, they go to Passeig de Gracia, a boulevard of luxury shops or a country mall.
“If Barcelona is not their home port, then cruise passengers are not active consumers of our city,” Ms. Sanz said in her letter.
“They just walk around for four hours and then they leave.”
Barcelona also complained that cruise lines were using too much water at a time when severe drought forced the city to impose restrictions.
Citizens are not allowed to water their vegetable gardens, and farmers have their water supply cut off.
The port of Barcelona has denied reports that cruise ships are pumping out the city’s water resources.
“Eighty percent of all cruise ships have desalination plants on board and therefore should not take water on board,” the port authority said in a statement.
The port said about 800 cruise ships will arrive in the city this year, 62 percent of which were built in the last 10 years, meaning they cause less pollution.
In 2021, the Balearic Islands authorities reduced the number of cruise ships arriving in Palma, Mallorca to three per day after reaching an agreement with the cruise lines.
In 2018, CLIA said it had signed an agreement to limit the number of cruise terminals to seven.
Source: I News
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