Barcelona is utilizing its vacationer tax to assist sort out the results of local weather change

After large scale anti-tourism protests over the summer time, Barcelona is making an attempt to show a destructive right into a optimistic by spending a few of the cash raised from the town’s tax on guests to sort out points attributable to local weather change.

Barcelona is among the most visited cities in Europe, and for a lot of of Barcelona’s 1.6 million residents, tourism is seen as the explanation for a rising variety of issues, like a housing scarcity, rising costs and altering neighborhoods.

“The city material is totally destroyed,” Barcelona resident Fernando advised CBS Information. He lives in a neighborhood that’s fashionable amongst vacationers for its eating places and bars. 

“This space notably, you recognize, I’ve lived right here for over 20 years and it is simply, slowly getting, like, soulless. I might say 50% of the buildings are right here only for short-term use, you recognize, for leases,” he stated.

“If it was like attention-grabbing cultural inventive and these sorts of shoppers, that might be significantly better for everyone,” Barcelona resident Elizabeth, who works at a resort, advised CBS Information. “However individuals who come just for occasion, drink and simply not caring for the town. That’s the downside.”

However Barcelona is amongst a lot of southern European cities going through one other downside: the more and more excessive results of local weather change. In recent times, it has turn into dryer and hotter, and there have been intense and harmful warmth waves and draughts.

The rising temperatures have turn into an issue for metropolis infrastructure like public faculties, a lot of which wouldn’t have air con, as the acute warmth of summer time extends into the college yr.

At one Barcelona public college, 11-year-old scholar Mia advised CBS Information that she struggles to pay attention when it is sizzling.

“It is very onerous,” she stated.

Her classmate Theo agreed.

“Typically once you’re like, within the class, and also you simply got here out enjoying soccer, it is very popular,” Theo stated.

However this yr, for the primary time, Mia and Theo have air con at school, after a system was put in over the summer time. It was paid for utilizing cash raised from Barcelona’s vacationer tax — a small price charged to guests.

“The vacationer tax is what the vacationers that go to our metropolis pay when they’re in a resort or in a touristic condominium,” Barcelona’s Deputy Mayor Laia Bonet advised CBS Information. “The opportunity of utilizing these revenues, the tourism tax, for such a mission is essential in order that we are able to settle for tourism in our metropolis and the function that tourism has.”

Barcelona’s Metropolis Corridor has launched a program to put in power environment friendly warmth pumps and photo voltaic panels in all the metropolis’s 170 public faculties over six years. The goal is to offer air con whereas additionally decarbonizing by changing outdated, gas-powered heating techniques. It’s investing the equal of round $100 million within the mission, all of which it says, is coming from the vacationer tax.

“I believe it is one of the simplest ways to hyperlink tourism to… the required battle towards local weather change,” Bonet stated, including that the vacationer tax funding for this system is “an important assist.”

“It makes the distinction,” Bonet stated.

However anti-tourism activist Agnes Rodriguez says in utilizing cash raised from vacationers, the town is lacking the purpose.

“The federal government must be doing this with out relying on tourism … it is public well being,” Rodriguez advised CBS Information. “In the event you’re coming to Barcelona tonight, to Chicago or to New York, and also you’re staying in a vacationer condominium the place a household must be dwelling, you might be a part of this metropolis altering. You are affecting the life of individuals dwelling there.”

Rodriguez says that Barcelona residents, not vacationers, must be on the heart of the town’s battle towards local weather change.

“We’re not a theme park. We’re not Disney World. So we wish to carry on being a metropolis and having the ability to stay right here,” she stated.