For real: Barcelona’s housing crisis caused by anti-hospitality policy, not tourism

Prop­erty man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­al Saverio Francesco Ber­to­lu­cci shares his views on Bar­celon­a’s hous­ing crisis and the anti-tour­ism polit­ics at play in his adop­ted home city. 

Pub­lished in col­lab­or­a­tion with Tourism’s Hori­zon: Travel for the Mil­lions, a “Good Tour­ism” Insight Part­ner, it’s Mr Ber­to­lu­c­ci’s sev­enth “GT” Insight.

[You too can write a “GT” Insight.]

On the anti-tourism radar

The most vis­ited Span­ish city, Bar­celona, is rarely off the radar of the anti-tour­ism aca­dem­ic and media estab­lish­ment. The num­bers call into ques­tion their pess­im­ist­ic moralism. 

Des­pite the alleged polit­ic­al tur­moil around tour­ism, Bar­celona con­tin­ues to attract glob­al appre­ci­ation: The Catalan cap­it­al is the world’s eighth most attract­ive city for vis­it­ors and entre­pren­eurs. The lat­ter, attrac­ted to hos­pit­al­ity-based places and life­styles, inject energy, cre­ativ­ity, and inclus­ive employ­ment into their newly adop­ted home.

While a few loud (and some­times con­front­a­tion­al) Bar­celona res­id­ents, backed by the sup­posedly learned opin­ions of left­ist pro­fess­ors, berate and chant at tour­ists  — and squirt water at them while they are eat­ing — Bar­celona has reached its low­est unem­ploy­ment rate in 16 years (6.1%).

Fur­ther­more, des­pite wel­com­ing an aston­ish­ing 15.6 mil­lion vis­it­ors to their city in 2023, 72.6% of Bar­celona res­id­ents had a pos­it­ive per­cep­tion of the hos­pit­al­ity eco­nomy. Mean­while, only 23.5% of them feared ‘over­tour­ism’, down from 43.6% six years earlier.

So what’s all the fuss about?

Con­tents ^

The politics of housing

Although Barcelona’s vis­it­or eco­nomy is a unique asset for a city pos­i­tion­ing itself for a bright­er tomor­row, the pop­u­list left’s “hous­ing for all” pro­pa­ganda has suc­cess­fully stoked fears of hol­i­day rent­als tak­ing homes away from locals.

It star­ted in the early 2010s when laws restric­ted the con­struc­tion of new down­town hotels while allow­ing clas­si­fic­a­tion upgrades to exist­ing prop­er­ties. Con­sequently, hotel room rates surged, as did vis­it­ors’ pref­er­ence for short-term rent­als of res­id­en­tial apartments.

Forged by the sub­sequent polit­ics of fear, the dag­ger to the heart of a healthy prop­erty mar­ket was a law approved on Novem­ber 7, 2023 to ban all hol­i­day rent­al lodgings by 2028. This means that prop­erty own­ers will no longer be able to rent out their spaces for 31 nights or few­er to the likes of long-stay hol­i­day-makers and digit­al nomads. 

One would think that the new law would put more apart­ments on the long-term rent­al mar­ket. How­ever that mar­ket is also now heav­ily reg­u­lated by the gov­ern­ment. The “Ley de Vivienda” (hous­ing law) imposes rent con­trols on privately-held prop­er­ties avail­able for long-term rent­als of 12 months or longer.

Read more by Saverio Francesco Bertolucci

Cur­rently, all rent­als of 12 months or longer (so called “per­man­ent rent­als”) of prop­er­ties up to 150 sqm in area, or whose rents are below EUR 7,256.50 per month, are sub­ject to these price con­trols. This stat­ist diktat cre­ates a two-tiered mar­ket in which those who own lux­ury hous­ing options may con­tin­ue to vol­un­tar­ily engage in the nor­mal sup­ply-demand pat­tern of a mar­ket, while those who don’t, can’t.

What was obvi­ous to many, but appar­ently not so clear to policy-makers, was that ordin­ary prop­erty own­ers act­ing in respons­ible and sus­tain­able fin­an­cial self-interest would choose to pur­sue the more attract­ive mar­ket-driv­en yields of “tem­por­al rent­als” (between 32 nights and 11 months), which are not affected by any pri­cing policy from the Gen­er­al­it­at, the region­al government.

As a res­ult Bar­celona has lost 75% of its long-term rent­al sup­ply over the past five years, the worst nation­al res­ult by a huge mar­gin. And, no sur­prise, a lack of avail­able long-term apart­ments, and the con­tin­ued appeal of the city to wealthy for­eign­ers look­ing to right­fully secure homes in a won­der­ful town, drove under­ly­ing prices even higher. 

So gov­ern­ment med­dling did not exactly grant hous­ing for everyone …

Con­tents ^

Waking up in Barcelona

Many experts, includ­ing Idealista’s spokes­per­son Fran­cisco Iñareta, have shown through their find­ings how a naïve and ill-con­sidered policy-mak­ing agenda was a sub­stan­tial cause of Barcelona’s hous­ing prob­lems, leav­ing young gen­er­a­tions and the middle class on the brink. Mean­while, tour­ism ‘experts’, along with unrep­res­ent­at­ive “social move­ment act­iv­ists”, con­tin­ue to pre­scribe a non­sensic­al degrowth agenda for Bar­celona.

Most Bar­celon­ans are not afraid of tour­ism and tour­ists. Indeed they are com­ing to real­ise how much the city’s vis­it­ors, and the hos­pit­al­ity eco­nomy that serves them, have been scape­goated for very real but very com­plex prob­lems in society.

More con­tent tagged ‘Car­ry­ing capa­city, mass tour­ism, and over­tour­ism’

The truth is that Barcelona’s hous­ing crisis is being cre­ated by admin­is­trat­ors who believe in gov­ern­ment con­trol of private prop­er­ties. The evid­ence at home and abroad, con­tem­por­an­eous and his­tor­ic­al, is that such con­trol simply does not work. 

We talk about ‘over­tour­ism’ too much in Bar­celona, and in oth­er beloved places. Instead, we need to turn our atten­tion to gov­ern­ments, bur­eau­crats, and town plan­ners, and hold them to great­er account. 

The real­ity is that there is room for all types of people in my adop­ted city: Tour­ists, lifelong inhab­it­ants, tem­por­ary res­id­ents, and new wealthy cit­izens. It is time for Bar­celon­ans to wake up, and dis­cov­er what really ails such a fant­ast­ic place.

Con­tents ^

What do you think? 

Share your own thoughts about the rela­tion­ship between hos­pit­al­ity and hous­ing in Bar­celona or else­where. (SIGN IN or REGISTER first. After sign­ing in you will need to refresh this page to see the com­ments section.)

Or write a “GT” Insight or “GT” Insight Bite of your own. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism, because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

“GT” doesn’t judge. “GT” pub­lishes. “GT” is where free thought travels.

If you think the tour­ism media land­scape is bet­ter with “GT” in it, then please …

Con­tents ^

About the author

Saverio Francesco Ber­to­lu­cci stud­ied inter­na­tion­al tour­ism & leis­ure at Uni­versità di Bologna, Italy and sus­tain­able tour­ism devel­op­ment at Aal­borg Uni­ver­sity, Den­mark.

A busi­ness devel­op­ment spe­cial­ist with VDB Lux­ury Prop­er­ties in Bar­celona, Spain, the quad­ri­lin­gual Itali­an is inter­ested in des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment, the exper­i­ence eco­nomy, and cus­tom­er care. Saverio says that he has a “per­son­al pas­sion for social sus­tain­ab­il­ity, remote tour­ism, and co-creation”.

Featured pic (top of post)

El Pór­tico de la Lavandera, Park Güell, Bar­celona, Spain. Image by Log­gaWig­gler (CC0) via Pixabay. “GT” added the let­ters that spell out “CRISIS”.

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