The Other’s Wave: Ethnographic Insights on Three “Tsunamis of Tourism” in Barcelona

Year 2021, Volume: 7 Issue: 1, 101 - 122, 09.07.2021

Marco Romagnoli

Abstract

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, the case of Barcelona was an emblematic example of how a city had turned into an iconic tourism destination in a few decades thanks to smart, yet incautious, tourism development policies based on the most attractive features the city is endowed with. The paper is a critical reflection analyzing the major complications, called “tsunamis”, the city of Barcelona has faced in recent years: political instability, terrorism and tourismophobia. The paper aims at 1) retracing the causes and motivations but also community reactions and sociocultural consequences to the three tsunamis, and 2) trying to learn lessons from the Barcelonan case study proposing solutions to the tourismophobia phenomenon. The results stem from an ethnographic fieldwork undertaken during the IPAC Summer School in 2018, whose aim was to understand the paradox of international tourism, at once bringing economic benefits but creating sociocultural disequilibria. The analysis considers written sources and the participant observation during the ethnographic fieldworks in Barcelona.

Keywords

touristophobia, tsunamis of tourism, Barcelomania, mass tourism, political instability, terrorism

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