At home, we certified that the tourist season had begun when we heard a fellow citizen of the world shouting "my mobile!" as she ran desperately down Sant Sever street (the scene is often repeated and usually continues with general shouting, a bunch of tourists hiding their mobile phone ---or their respective travel bag--- as if embracing a relic of Jesus Christ, and a brawl that ends with another fellow citizen of the world accusing their captors of racism, whether they are the tourists themselves or some illustrious member of the secret police).
The City Council must have also noticed an excess of flip-flops in the neighborhood and has given us a necessary proposal for regulating the masses of visitors in Ciutat Vella, agreeing with the two associations of professional guides in the city (AGUICAT and APIT) on a limit of 15 tourists per group and also the limitation of groups where there is a higher density of visitors.
The (provisional) document has some undeniable successes that residents will appreciate like the lottery; for example, the annihilation of the dreadful megaphones that pollute our eardrums or the prohibition of attracting tourists on the street (to thus encourage regulated visits with prior appointment, advance ticket purchase, and so on). It is also opportune that the control of places where there is greater congestion is specified; to give the examples that most affect us at home, in Plaça de Sant Felip Neri, on Salomó ben Adret street, and in Manuel Ribé square, only two groups will be able to coexist at the same time.
That the measure is still awaiting a definitive form (our beloved councilors have had only two years of pandemic to anticipate the return of tourists and reach a consensus on a text; it must be a short time) certifies, however, that politics lives in a permanent adagio sostenuto.
In the places I have mentioned, this servant sees dozens of groups of tourists daily crowding the street; its control, therefore, will help the mobility of the residents and will ensure us an existence far from the parameters of the theme park. However, and I would say I speak for most of my street colleagues,any legal text promoted by the City Council will become dead letter without a minimum control policy. Apart from the existence of a huge number of unprofessional guides andfree-tours that they will have a lot of ease in circumventing the rule, it is not necessary to be an expert in crowd management to know that measures like these must have the respective follow-up. And if the City Council, allow me a certain Mediterranean distrust, is as effective with control as with security against robberies, I predict a lot of poetry and little effectiveness.If the City Council, allow me a certain Mediterranean distrust, is as effective with control as with security against robberies, I predict a lot of poetry and little effectiveness
Without an all-encompassing legislation, affecting all tourist guides in the city, this document of good intentions will only cause frustration and, in the improbable case of being fulfilled, the queues of people crammed into the squares and streets in question will only increase, for the simple fact that the guides will take turns making the mass of "waiting" tourists increase to dangerous limits. This, in fact, already happens in Plaza Sant Felip Neri when it closes its doors so that the children of the school located there can use it as a recreation area. On the other hand, and contrary to many of my neighbors, I have a very high tolerance for tourism. We all bother people when we travel the world and, in the end, it is almost impossible to regulate a space like El Call when most tourists want to visit the same spaces.
I value the good intention of the City Council in, at least, trying to alleviate the inevitable in all similar places in the world. But I insist; this tradition of approving provisional legal frameworks without any clue as to how their application will be controlled... is one of our most frustrating and execrable traditions.
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