3.3 million tourists visit the Sagrada Familia annually. Or, in other words, 10,000 visitors a day flood the Sagrada Familia neighborhood and have to get to the monument somehow. Some do it on foot or by public transport (just look at the overcrowding at the monument’s metro stop), but there are many who arrive by another form of transport that has already become another of the problems of mass tourism in the city: the tourist buses.
70,000 buses, about 20 per day, travel through the city every year, most of them tourist buses. Their circulation and, above all, their stops to load, unload and wait for tourists have become a bit of a nightmare for the residents of Sagrada Familia, to the point that last week they demonstrated to find a solution to the problem of having thousands of new “neighbors” every day in front of their houses.
They complain about the constant traffic of people, and the noise and nuisance caused by the bus stops in front of the houses, as they often keep the engines running during their stops to operate the air conditioning or heating, despite the fact that this violates the regulations. This, added to the pollution, prevents neighbors from doing something as simple as opening the windows of their homes.
The constant arrival of buses from early in the morning until late at night has led neighborhood associations to propose alternatives to the City Council. Among the suggestions is the creation of a bus parking lot inside the Eixample or that vehicles park in Diagonal Mar, allowing tourists to reach the Sagrada Família by public transport. Although the City Council has promised to study these options, it has not committed to implementing them.
In the meantime , it has proposed to increase the daily cost of parking for buses from 20 to 80 euros, which would increase municipal revenues from 1 to 4 million euros annually. However, neighbors are still waiting for a solution that would alleviate their daily situation and preserve their quality of life.