Learning From Barcelona’s Tourism Backlash
Cities must first and foremost serve the people who call them home.
I’m a city enthusiast to my core, and Barcelona is a city that has everything.
Therefore, I should love it, right?
Its dramatic geography affords perfect vistas of blue sea at every corner and bend—from the vintage amusement park atop Tibidabo to the cathedral steps of Montjuïc. Barcelona’s historic core boasts perhaps the finest Gothic quarter in Europe. Not too far away, miles of sandy beaches stretch along its Mediterranean coast, and after exploring them, you can cool off with a cold beer and world-class snacking at La Boqueria, the city’s central food hall—one of the nicest public markets in the world.
And then there’s the people.
Think of the most famous Spanish chefs, architects, and painters, and you’ll find that many hail from Barcelona and the surrounding Catalan region. This stacked roster includes Chef Ferran Adrià and his brother Albert, who applied a Harry Potter-like magic to gastronomy and sparked a global culinary revolution. There’s the mind-bending architectural marvel of La Sagrada Familia, which broke ground the year Virginia Woolf was born (1882) and has been under construction ever since. Antoni Gaudí, its modernist creator, met an untimely death when he was struck by a streetcar in 1924—just two years shy of a century before the cathedral’s grand opening in 2026. Catalunya has also gifted the world some of its most inventive painters, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, to name two. And although the most famous of all Spanish painters, Malaga-born Pablo Picasso, wasn’t Catalan, he moved to Barcelona at age 13 and credits his decade there as the most formative of his life.
So, what’s not to love?
My first visit to Barcelona was in 2005, and while it delivered the kind of punch and wow factor reserved for the world’s most unique and cool places, even back then, it was starting to feel like a city built more for its visitors than for the people who lived there. As a result, even 20 years ago, you could sense a palpable resentment from the locals toward the tourists. And with each of my five or so trips back, that feeling has only gotten worse.
It’s hard to love a place that doesn’t love you back.
While I recognize the irony of being a tourist reflecting on my own tourist experiences and also criticizing the impact of mass tourism, I am a firm believer that tourism is enriching for a city when it’s done right. However, when you consider the growing anti-tourism movement in Europe, where Barcelona has become an epicenter (most notably, thousands of protestors taking to the streets and some shooting water guns at tourists), city leaders everywhere should be asking what exactly went wrong because clearly, these problems did not appear overnight. There have been similar protests in Amsterdam, Paris, Oaxaca, Venice, Lisbon, Kyoto, and other places too.
Portland is in need of some catalytic, forward-thinking projects that will give our city a boost. But with so much at stake, lately I worry that short-term pressure may obscure long-term vision—and that we’ll look too externally for hasty solutions without consideration of who we are as a city.
And this type of thinking, I believe, is where cities like Barcelona went wrong.
As we gather our energy and align our vision (and tax increment financing districts) to shape the next big chapter, it's vital that we make thoughtful, long-term choices that reflect who we are more than who we want to be like—and we must begin by recognizing how our city earned its reputation in the first place, learning the hard lessons from what we didn’t get right.
Portland is a great place to live, and therefore, visit. I have been fortunate to visit most large American cities and dozens around the world, and every time I leave and return, I’m happy to be home. Despite our often self-defeating attitude toward change, occasional civic arguments that more closely resemble episodes of South Park than actual reality, and a social culture that often feels more like a big high school than a big city, there is also magic at the core of this precious formula—and it is this: People here really care—even if sometimes that emotion misdirects us.
People care about roasting your coffee and brewing your beer, about building beautiful furniture and designing iconic sneakers, and about perfecting the art of Connecticut-style pizza and Texas barbecue—but made with ingredients that are far better than either of those places are capable of producing. At a time when independent retail is being threatened by Amazon and DoorDash, just about every Portland neighborhood still has an independent record store, a place to buy a good book, and at least one good ice cream shop. Whereas most cities would have paved over their best views and built mansions 100 years ago, Forest Park instead boasts 80 miles of hiking trails.
What’s my point?
As someone who has been on the front lines of tourism and Portland culture for nearly two decades, I can attest that Portland earned its reputation as one of those unique places that is loved by both locals and visitors for exactly the same reasons—it is truly a place that’s the sum of its parts. People don’t come to Portland for big tourist attractions. We don’t have that many. They come here to hang out in our neighborhoods, connect with our nature, and enjoy the same restaurants that we love. There is no weird tourist district with tilt-a-whirls and wax museums, no Pier 39, and no district where fudge shops outnumber third-wave coffee boutiques. Our most famous attractions include a massive bookstore where I spend way too much money, uniquely wonderful and walkable retail districts, and what is universally considered the best Japanese garden outside of Japan. And despite some of the reputational challenges of the past few years (which will prove to be short-term if we make the right decisions), Portland still ranks really high on many lists—specifically culinary (six James Beard Awards in the last two years!) and outdoor (the best network of urban hiking trails in America!).
While we should not fear growth and outside investment, our secret sauce is a culture we’ve built for ourselves. Let’s not forget that formula.
Portland’s marketing engines did thoughtful work. A few years ago, while consulting on a big food festival in Dallas, a senior tourism official told me offline how envious he was of Portland’s tourism culture. “You guys are so smart to promote what makes you unique—not merely how you compete with the pack,” he said as we toured one of the many hotel ballrooms in central Dallas.
I’ve heard this sentiment expressed many times over the years as I’ve collaborated with dozens of tourism organizations around the country—and some in Europe. What has always struck me is the industry recognition of how thoughtfully Portland’s (and Oregon’s) image has been stewarded, along with the willingness of our tourism leaders to take a big-picture approach to promoting our independent businesses and the culture of the city—not just the businesses within the districts and hotels where the taxes that fund these efforts are generated. We may take this for granted, but this holistic approach was unique, the envy of many other cities, and has now been copied and imitated everywhere.
Beware of Shiny Object Syndrome. The seeds of our current growing pains didn’t start in March 2020. They were sown during the years of our rapid growth and bolstered by the attitude that the “good times” would last forever—as the recipe that allowed creativity to thrive became burdened—and the need for a new long-term vision became apparent.
Success, it turns out, is a lousy teacher.
When an organization (city, business, coffee shop, shoe company) reaches this critical point, it can go one of two ways. The first way is the one that follows the path of taking its own success for granted and looks to reinvent without having a core strategy or sense of self in place—and this leads to the type of transactional thinking that never goes well. Instead of thinking of who we are, we think of what we’re like—and explore our options more transactionally and superficially.
What’s the next big thing?
What can we move to town?
What did Seattle do?
Should we bring Michelin to town?
These aren’t bad questions to ask in and of themselves because it’s important to think big and be inspired by other places (in fact, consideration of investing in the Michelin Guide is becoming industry-standard and needs to be part of our culinary strategy).
The challenge is when these decisions are not made through the careful lens of local culture, without a big-picture understanding of what we’re trying to create, and in a manner where value isn’t demonstrated to a city’s residents. This, I believe, is what leads to the creation of tourism districts that don’t serve the locals, and without consideration of local culture (and also what gave the world New Coke, Google Glass, and the Edsel, for that matter).
We may not have all the right answers, and that’s why it’s important to start with the right questions so we can avoid creating, 40 years down the road, a version of ourselves we don’t like.
Let’s always remember:
By being ourselves, we have the most to share.
To be continued….