On real estate portals, you see them advertised. In Barcelona, hostels and also hotels are for sale. For one million euros or for twenty-five million, depending on the stars. And what will happen to the apartments that had an Airbnb license?
That hotels are being sold is impressive, because you imagine that only an investment fund with a lot of money and little hurry will be able to buy them, and that, therefore, they will buy them from an investment fund with less money and more hurry. Whoever buys a hotel expects that the Covid thing will pass and that the herds of tourists will return.
Meanwhile, in the discussions, everyone rushes to talk about the "tourism model" that is "unsustainable" and that needs to be changed. Tourists are always the others, not us; when we go to places, we are interested in local customs and gastronomy and, yes, we go to see some monument, because we cannot not see the Acropolis if we go to Athens, but it's not the same, Antonia, you tell me, they go to La Boqueria and take photos of lobsters and prawns, and yes, agreed, we take photos of the market scribes if we go to Mexico City, and if we go to Istanbul, we find it very funny that they greet us in Catalan in the Grand Bazaar and we want to haggle, because it's a custom, listen, but we carry a notebook to write things down, because we are more "travelers." Yes. That.
Okay. We might prefer to go to the Siberian mines rather than rent a segway to stroll through the Ciutadella without burning a single calorie, as they do. We don't understand how they can orally ingest that lump of rice, with chorizo scattered around and sometimes frankfurter, which they call (with an excess of optimism bordering on a criminal offense) "paella." But we, if we go to Athens, will probably be forced to eat the worst Greek salad in history, and, if we go to Istanbul, we will also smoke shisha (respecting, of course, Covid measures).
I detest the tourist crowd, those who go in groups listening to a man who speaks protecting himself from the sun with an umbrella, but I detest even more those who claim to have "discovered" a little restaurant there, in the tourist spot, where only "they" go, the "locals," and, of course, we can't say it, because it will fill up with tourists.