This is an editorial I wrote for the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies introducing a Special Issue on tourism in Spain.
Abstract
This editorial raises crucial issues surrounding the sustainability of tourist cities in Spain, highlighting the tension between the desire for leisure and consumption-driven tourism and the growing need for more sustainable, degrowth-oriented practices. Through the lens of philosopher Marina Garcés’s concept of livability, it explores the challenges and potential solutions for creating tourist cities in Spain that are not only attractive and livable but also environmentally responsible and socially equitable.
Keywords
tourism
degrowth
Garcés, Marina
livability
Livable life: it is the great question of our time. (my translation, original emphasis Garcés 15)
Mass tourism in Spain is a very timely topic. The locals of popular tourist destinations like Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Mallorca, and Benidorm have a love/hate relationship with tourism. On the one hand, they recognize that, since the 2008 economic crisis and the negative economic impact of the 2020 pandemic, a vital component for economic recovery is a strong tourist sector (UNWTO 2013; Fletcher et al. 2019; Afinoguénova 2023). However, on the other hand, vacation apartments like airbnbs raise the rent for neighbors, hotels hide impoverished living conditions in neighborhoods, and natural resources like water and land are unevenly distributed and consumed (Blanchar 2023; Cercós Tuset 2023; Casal Lodeiro 2023). As a result, many inhabitants of Spanish tourist cities are becoming increasingly more concerned with overtourism, which the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) defines as ‘the impact of tourism on a destination, or parts thereof, that excessively influences perceived quality of life of citizens and/or quality of visitors’ experiences in a negative way’ (UNWTO 4). The decrease in perceived quality of life due to mass tourism has led to the formation of various activist groups ranging from those with clear anti-tourism positions like Arran and Manacor Caterva to those that advocate for a tourist industry that benefits both residents and tourists like the Neighborhood Assembly for Sustainable Tourism in Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia (McLaughlin; Friel; assambleabarris). As 2023 ends and 2024 begins, it is predicted that Spain could reach a new record of 86.5 million tourists, which is approximately twice Spain’s population (Hinojosa). Tourist-phobia will only intensify if the following question is not addressed: What is a livable tourist city in twenty-first-century Spain?
As a way of exploring mass tourism in Spain today, this editorial culls insights from the work of philosopher Marina Garcés, especially her concept of livability from her essay Nueva ilustración radical (2017). Garcés argues that fewer and fewer people can live a dignified life because the capitalist system is unsustainable. Limitless growth, which the capitalist system requires, is simply impossible on a planet with finite resources. This is the central contradiction of capitalism. However, to keep the capitalist system working for as long as possible, governments implement austerity measures. According to Garcés:
the austerity that is invoked to ensure the sustainability of the system works as a machine to reduce public spending and to reduce the expectations of a good life to a privileged few. Put more directly: it is a readjustment of the margins of a dignified life. (my translation 19)
In other words, resources, energy, and services—to maintain economic growth—are distributed asymmetrically creating unequal access to the material conditions of life. The argument is that, even though social and environmental conditions worsen, if there is overall economic growth, there is human improvement. Referring to economic growth, Alberto Garzón of the Spanish political party Izquierda Unida laments that ‘the fetish of growth is deeply rooted in the minds of citizens.’ (Casal Lodeiro n.p.) He is optimistic, however, that this growth mindset is slowly changing:
the reality indicates that not only with more economic growth is there not more happiness (the Easterlin paradox), but in many cases this dynamic leads to the growth of mental problems in modern societies (stress, anxiety, depression)… Phenomena such as the Great Resignation in the United States, or the growing acceptance of a reduction in the working day in part of Western society, point to important cracks in the received common sense. (Casal Lodeiro n.p.)
Garcés seeks to shift the meaning of improvement from a purely economic understanding back to a social and environmental one. The moral, political, and scientific imperative to make ourselves better through knowledge should mean to make ourselves richer socially and environmentally, and not solely economically. Her call for radical enlightenment is a call to make life livable again for all.
The special section included here on ‘A Tourist City: Utopia and Dystopia. Views from the Spanish “Boom,” 1964–1975’—guest edited by Eugenia Afinoguénova—is a much-needed and enlightening contribution to the ongoing debate over tourism and the reorganization of space in Spain during the tourist boom in the 1960s and 1970s. While the Dossier by Afinoguénova and the Afterword penned by Labrador Méndez provide valuable context for this section, it is worth briefly noting the ways in which the texts question what a livable tourist city is. Four of the six essays explore image-making in a tourist city (photography as visualization of alienation in Afinoguénova, painting in Díaz Sánchez and postcards in Arribas as triggers for consumption, and the filmic unconscious in Estévez Hernández) and the remaining two contemplate utopic visions of environmentally responsible tourist cities in the Canary Islands (environmentally conscious architecture in Díaz del Campo Martín-Mantero, and TEN-BEL’s rise and fall in Kistler). Overall, the essays raise crucial issues surrounding the sustainability of tourist cities born from the Spanish boom, but do not offer potential solutions for creating tourist cities in the present that are not only attractive and livable but also environmentally responsible and socially equitable.
It seems to us that an inquiry into Garcés’s concept of livability within a tourist context is essential, as it involves balancing the needs and desires of locals with those of visitors. What does it mean, as Garcés suggests, to ‘hilvanar de nuevo un tiempo de lo vivible’? (31; sew together a new livable present). Degrowth may have some answers. Perhaps it means transitioning from conventional ideas related to tourism, such as leisure and consumption, toward a more unconventional and sustainable concept, such as degrowth. Garcés frames her new radical enlightenment from the point of view of an anti-capitalist politics. She points out that historically one of the main strategies used to minimize and contain a radical critique of capitalism has been the concept of sustainability or sustainable development (17). However, for Garcés, sustainable development is precisely one of the easily believed ideologies of our time that must be questioned. Is continual economic growth possible without being environmentally and socially exploitative? Others have questioned the growth imperative as well. Leading the charge in Spain has been the Barcelona School of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology directed by Joan Martínez-Alier at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). The Barcelona School argues that economic growth depends on the constant influx of materials from peripheral territories at the expense of underprivileged people. According to Kallis, ‘[g]rowth in this reading is not just a matter of technological progress, human capital or a culture of innovation but of unequal exchange, cheapening and exploiting poor people and their natures and securing a low-cost inflow of materials and fossil fuels’ (86). To counter exploitation and, echoing Garcés’s concept of livability, to guarantee a dignified and full life for all, the Barcelona School juxtaposes this growth mindset with that of degrowth. As opposed to ecological economics, whose central tenet is the recognition of external limits such as natural resources, the Barcelona School’s innovative approach is to create collective processes of ‘self-limitation—a culture of limits in the pursuit of joy and well-being, not just a defensive strategy of averting disaster and sustaining the current system longer’ (Kallis 88). Learning how to live well with less and to collectively choose it as a social goal is possible with the defense, reclamation, and reimagining of the commons.
Advocating degrowth in tourism would, by extension, require tourism to ‘move radically from a private and privatizing activity to one founded in and contributing to the common’ (Büscher and Fletcher 664). In other words, tourists must learn to travel in ways that privilege and help the local communities they visit. Lionel Saul, a research assistant and visiting lecturer at EHL Hospitality Business School, suggests ‘travelers can restore coral reefs, plant vegetation, or ensure their money stays at the local level by choosing smaller hotels and family-owned restaurants’ (Pitrelli). Reconfiguring leisure activities in this manner is more regenerative and less extractive.
In conclusion, the concept of tourism degrowth emerges as a compelling alternative to the alienating effects of constant consumption in tourist cities. Nonetheless, the social and environmental benefits of a paradigm shift from growth to degrowth are not immediately apparent to the urban and rural working class who, paradoxically, endure the primary consequences of capitalist alienation. The key to convincing the working class of the advantages of degrowth is to demonstrate how alternative economic cultures of ‘commoning’ can positively impact the lives of the majority. This collective effort has the potential to pave the way for a more equitable, sustainable, and just future. Ongoing discourse around degrowth is a vital step toward fostering a broader understanding of what makes a tourist city livable for both residents and tourists in twenty-first-century Spain.
References
Afinoguénova, Eugenia (2023), ‘The End of History, Alienation, and Urban Photography Across the French-Spanish Border, 1964–1975’, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies
Assemblea de Barris pel Decreixement Turístic (2023), assembleabarris.wordpress.com, https://assembleabarris.wordpress.com/. Accessed 23 October 2023.
Blanchar, Clara (2023), ‘La masificación turística de Barcelona desde dentro: “Yo no podría vivir aquí”’, El País, 1 July, https://elpais.com/espana/catalunya/2023-07-02/la-masificacion-turistica-de-barcelona-desde-dentro-yo-no-podria-vivir-aqui.html. Accessed 23 October 2023.
Büscher, B., and Fletcher, R. (2017), ‘Destructive creation: Capital accumulation and the structural violence of tourism’, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25:5, pp.651–667.
Casal Lodiero, Manuel (2021), ‘The Degrowth platform of the CUP for Catalonia’, Resilience, 10 February, https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-02-10/the-degrowth-platform-of-the-cup-for-catalonia/. Accessed 23 October 2023.
Cercós Tuset, Laura (2023), ‘El turismo en Barcelona, en el epicentro de la campaña electoral 2023’, El Nacional, https://www.elnacional.cat/es/elecciones/municipales-2023/turismo-barcelona-epicentro-campana-elecciones-municipales-2023_1027839_102.html. Accessed 23 October 2023.
Fletcher, Robert et al. (2019), ‘Tourism and degrowth: an emerging agenda for research and praxis’, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27:12, pp.1745-1763.
Friel, Mikhaila (2023), ‘An anti-capitalist group in Spain placed fake warning signs on beaches to keep tourists away’, Business Insider, 18 August, https://www.businessinsider.in/thelife/news/an-anti-capitalist-group-in-spain-placed-fake-warning-signs-on-beaches-to-keep-tourists-away/articleshow/102812071.cms. Accessed 23 October 2023.
Garcés, Marina (2017), Nueva ilustración radical, Barcelona: Anagrama.
Hinojosa, Vivi (2023), ‘España podría cerrar 2023 con un nuevo récord de 86,5 millones de turistas’, Hosteltur, 12 Aug 2023, https://www.hosteltur.com/158807_espana-podria-cerrar-2023-con-un-nuevo-record-de-865-millones-de-turistas.html. Accessed 23 October 2023.
Kallis, G. (2023), ‘Degrowth and the Barcelona School’, in The Barcelona School of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology, eds. S. Villamayor-Tomas and R. Muradian, Studies in Ecological Economics 8, Springer: pp.83-90.
McLaughlin, Karl (2017), ‘Anti-tourism attacks in Spain: Who is behind them and what do they want?’, Independent, 10 August, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/spain-attacks-anti-tourism-british-tourists-visit-barcelona-majorca-valencia-san-sebastian-a7886371.html. Accessed 23 October 2023.
Pitrelli, Monica (2023) ‘“They just come, take a nice selfie … and leave.” Overtourism returns, but cities are fighting back’, CNBC Travel, 8 October, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/09/cities-are-fighting-back-against-overtourism-venice-amsterdam-bali.html. Accessed 27 October 2023.
United Nations World Tourism Organization (2013), ‘International tourism: An engine for the economic recovery’ ONWTO Press Release # 13081, https://www.unwto.org/archive/global/press-release/2013-12-12/international-tourism-engine-economic-recovery. Accessed 23 October 2023.
United Nations World Tourism Organization (2018), ‘“Overtourism”? Understanding and managing urban tourism growth beyond perceptions’, Madrid: UNWTO.
