Four years ago, I left New York City to become a travel writer based in my mother’s homeland, Spain.
Like most of the 18,000 people granted digital nomad visas in the country last year alone, I hoped to improve my quality of life – and my Spanish.
But in Barcelona, where Catalan is the official language and annual visitors outnumber residents ten to one, I didn’t hear much Spanish on the streets.
I did, however, learn one word quickly: guiri.
Locals used it – half in despair, half in disdain – to describe the foreigners who flock to Spain looking for sun, sex and sangria, only to leave with bad hangovers and worse sunburns.
Guiris were urinating in the streets. Guiris were warbling under windows. Guiris, it seemed, had turned Barcelona into a ‘theme park’.
I understood the frustration. According to a recent study, Barcelona is the most city most densely packed with tourists in the world and, as a result, the second loudest.
My neighbourhood, El Raval, was so noisy with pub crawlers that banners reading ‘RESPECT’ hung from balconies and city workers handed out lollipops wrapped with shushing cartoons.
A large group of tourists walks in front of Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona
A throng of sun seekers covers the sand at Barceloneta beach in the Catalan city
Still, as a newcomer, I couldn’t fully share the anger of the protesters who marched in the streets with signs reading ‘TOURISM KILLS THE CITY’.
At one demonstration, a man made a throat-slitting gesture at a couple of teenagers outside a Taco Bell.
I thought, Come on, haven’t you ever been a tourist? Isn’t it a little selfish to want to keep Barcelona’s gorgeous architecture, abundant culture, jubilant street festivals, and beachside paellas all to yourself?
When housing activist-turned-mayor Ada Colau and her successor Jaume Collboni both warned that the city risked becoming a ‘theme park’, I was tempted to dismiss it as trite hyperbole.
Sure, I thought, parts of Barcelona are tacky and overcrowded – but they’re easy enough to avoid, just like I avoided Times Square as a New Yorker.
Then I moved to the Gothic Quarter.
I knew the medieval heart of Barcelona’s Old Town would be crawling with tourists.
But my apartment overlooked a quiet, charming plaza – and since I was renting it from a friend of a friend, I could live there without the usual Airbnb guilt.
Demonstrators march through the streets of Barcelona during an anti-tourism protest in June
Daniel Maurer left New York City to become a travel writer four years ago hoping to improve his quality of life and his Spanish
With short-term lets driving up rents, the city has vowed not to renew its tourist apartments and Spain is threatening to smack a 21 per cent tax on them.
I figured subletting would allow me to live like a local. But there were few residents left to blend in with. A banner at a block party described them as ‘a species in danger of extinction’.
Between 2007 and 2022, the Gothic Quarter lost a fifth of its population and became the neighbourhood with the most foreign-born residents – 66 per cent in 2022, most of them from Western Europe and North America.
One study dubbed the neighbourhood a ‘foreign-only’ enclave, estimating there were 71 tourist beds per 100 residents. During the month I lived there, bumping into a lifelong Barcelonan – now a statistical minority citywide – was about as rare as spotting Mickey or Goofy among the hordes at Disneyland.
Disneyland, it turned out, was an apt comparison.
In Gothicland, the lines aren’t for rides but for viral cheesecakes.
There are animators like the Erotic Museum’s Marilyn Monroe impersonator, or the clowns who photobomb selfie-takers to shake them down for euros.
There are carnival games, too. Step right up to the Surprise Box store and unbox a mystery item for TikTok! There’s even an actual ferris wheel. The only thing missing from Gothicland is an entrance fee.
Venice imposed one on day-trippers in 2024 and raked in 5.4million euros this year, but the experiment was costly to manage, and tourism remained rampant while residents continued to flee.
Barcelona has introduced its own measures.
It plans to increase its tourist tax next year and has tried to rein in the countless souvenir shops that display t-shirts with crass slogans like ‘I
Trying to find an affordable lunch amidst the haute tapas bars is like searching for a bocadillo – a Spanish sandwich made using a baguette – in a haystack.
I often felt like I was in a bumper car arena as I dodged bike tours as well as walking tours that clearly defied the 20-person limit imposed in 2022. I had hoped to work from my balcony, but that went out the window when diners on the plaza gazed up at me like passengers on the It’s a Small World ride watching an animatronic flamenco dancer.
Some of those vermouth-buzzed vacationers were no doubt fantasising about living in Barcelona’s most romantic neighborhood – unaware that I was a fellow traveller dreaming of a place where I could work from my balcony unobserved.
If that sounds like a hall of funhouse mirrors, well, every theme park has one.
As Barcelona spends millions luring the Gothic Quarter’s crowds to less congested areas – and expats like me seek out calmer corners of the city – the carnival fare like penis-shaped waffles and churros con matcha is sure to spread. It’s no wonder the locals are on edge.
I now have more sympathy for people such as my friend in Sant Andreu, the only district left in Barcelona where more than 80 per cent of residents have lived in the city for more than a decade.
‘Do you know what I saw in my neighbourhood the other day?’ she asked me, looking like she had seen the zombie that augurs the outbreak. ‘A guiri.’
Daniel Maurer is the author of The Future of Travel, published by Melville House UK
