Tourism is like water: it sneaks into any open crack in the interesting places of the city to cover it with cameras and straw hats. If not, just ask the neighbors of Park Güell who have been denouncing that tourists are taking advantage of a legal loophole to sneak into the park during exclusive hours for neighbors.
The trick for locals… used by tourists
It all starts with Gaudir Més, the City Council’s program that allows Barcelonans free access to various cultural spaces with discounts or advantages.
At Park Güell the advantage involves free entry between 7:30 and 9:30 in the morning, a time restricted to tourists and limited to neighborhood use.
But it turns out that Gaudir Més has a trick, or, rather, a flaw: one can sign up without having to prove citizenship in Barcelona. The result? As Tot Barcelona explains in a report, and as we have seen for ourselves, there are dozens of websites, often Korean, that show step by step how to create a profile in Gaudir Més to sneak into the park when it is not the right time.
In the same report, Tot Barcelona explains that neighbors denounce that tour operators offer a false profile in Gaudir Més as part of their services.
The neighbors of the Park, tired of tourism
The denunciation of this practice coincides with an increase in complaints from the park’s neighbors, who have initiated campaigns to demand a halt to the touristization of the area. Last weekend they held a call to “occupy” the park by holding neighborhood activities in it.
Not only that. They also denounce that tourists enter the park with the Gaudir Més the rest of the day, not only during neighborhood hours. This allows the city council to count those tourists as neighbors and thus defend an alleged increase in neighborhood attendance at the park in the last year, a point that platforms such as Resistim al Park deny.
This is not the only criticism or concentration. This Saturday, May 23, they have called for cuts in the streets leading to the park to denounce the saturation of bus lines such as V19 and 24, which are filled with tourists going up to the park.
In short, a panorama of touristization at the gates of a summer that, if it continues as usual, will again break a record of tourists visiting the city.