José Carlos Rodríguez I
Santiago de Compostela (EFE).- Santiago de Compostela is one of the European cities with the greatest tourist pressure on the resident population. The number of overnight stays per inhabitant even exceeds cities such as Rome, London, Madrid or Barcelona, a situation that causes problems among the residents of some neighbourhoods, who feel that they are being “thrown out” of the city.
Last year, the Pilgrim’s Office issued a total of 438,000 compostelas, the highest figure in its history. A total of 3,236,619 passengers arrived at the Lavacolla airport, far exceeding the numbers it registered before the pandemic and, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), Santiago closed 2022 with 838,594 visitors and more than one and a half million of overnight stays, in a city where there are only 98,179 inhabitants on the census.
From January to March of this year, 121,694 people have arrived in the city. The latest data for Easter reflected a hotel occupancy of more than 75%, a situation that the hotel associations celebrate and report on the “good tourist prospects for the city”.
However, this is not the case among the residents of the Galician capital. From the neighborhood association A Xuntanza they observe how “a city model is being imposed” that in recent years “only generates inconvenience” and that “does not have an economic impact” on the daily life of residents.
This occurs, especially, in the Historic Center of Santiago and in traditional neighborhoods such as San Pedro, the natural entrance for pilgrims to the Compostela goal.
CONSEQUENCES OF AN “EXACERBATED” TOURISM
Crowded streets where “physical passage” is literally prevented, piled garbage, noise at any time of day, conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians, changes in the hotel offer, destruction of local or traditional commerce, the proliferation of houses for tourist use or the exponential rise in rental prices are some of the consequences of a tourism that grows every year.
“We have been warning about this problem for eight years. Tourism overwhelms life in some neighborhoods. We are a small city and there are services that cannot be improved because the money is used to accommodate all the tourists who come,” Mercedes Vázquez, a member of the A Xuntanza neighborhood association, told EFE.
Proposals and possible solutions come late. According to Mercedes, tourism is an economic sector “comparable to any type of industry”, so “real impact studies” are necessary to determine how it affects the quality of life of residents.
From the association, before the “inaction” of the administrations they try to be “proactive”. For this reason, last year they drew up a Decalogue of Good Practices that includes ten basic measures to promote coexistence between tourists and residents.
“There is a general rejection of pilgrims and tourists because in my neighborhood between 80% and 90% of the people do not live from tourism. A city model is being imposed on us that only generates problems. No one wants to walk through the old town anymore, there is a detachment from certain areas that have become a “theme park”, explains Vázquez.
TOURIST TAX
The growth of tourism has led the local council to develop a proposal that already exists in other cities such as Barcelona: a tourist tax to tax the impact generated by visitors in the city.
The Santiago City Council presented to the hotel sector a study on this tourist tax that would establish a payment of between 0.5 cents and 2.5 euros per day with a limit of six days, depending on the category of the hotel establishment, and which also would include houses for tourist use.
The study proposes that the Galician Parliament draw up a law that can authorize municipalities to apply this tax if they consider it so. The hotel establishments themselves would be in charge of the collection, which would collect this tax from the tourist at the time of check-out.
According to the study, this tax could generate income for the city of between 2.5 and 3 million euros per year. What is still under debate would be what this money would be used for, since both residents and hotel associations have different points of view.
The mayor of Santiago, Xosé Sánchez Bugallo, indicated, among the “possible purposes” to which this collection could be used, the rehabilitation and conservation of the historic city in “a broad sense.”
This would include “the maintenance of the population that is living in the historic city and its traditional commerce”, but it could also be dedicated to covering the “extra cost that the tourist impact can cause in certain services”, as well as the financing of activities and recreational and cultural events.
THE HOUSING PROBLEM
The latest report prepared by Idealista on the rental price estimates the increase in average income at 9.5% compared to December 2021. The square meter in Santiago is paid at around 8.2 euros, so renting a home of 90 meters supposes approximately a disbursement of 738 euros per month.
The rise in rents is influenced by the scarcity of public housing, but also by the proliferation of houses for tourist use, which the city council is trying to put a stop to.
The modification of the Xeral Municipal Planning Plan (PXOM) that regulates for the first time this activity outside the historic center -in this area they are totally prohibited by their own specific plan- allows that, in general, this type of housing can only be installed in the ground floor, if they allow residential use, or, failing that, on the first floor.
The Councilor for Urbanism, Mercedes Rosón, points out that in addition to the old town, it is possible that other neighborhoods are also “stressed” and affirms that there is “a long way to go” to make Santiago the city that it has always been, “of students , cultural, much more than a tourist city”.
Although this type of housing has proliferated in recent years, from the specialized portal AirDNA they point out that of the 909 tourist-use homes that existed in Santiago at the end of the third quarter of 2022, only 523 remain.
However, in the Association of Tourist Housing of Galicia they estimate a total of 681 tourist apartments, according to the Registry of Tourist Companies and Activities (REAT).
PSDEG PROPOSALS
Facing the municipal elections, the current councilor and Socialist Party candidate for city mayor, Xosé Sánchez Bugallo, maintains that tourism is “a very important economic activity in Santiago”, generating employment, and that what it is about looking for “the best and most optimal coexistence between tourists and neighbors.”
The mayor of Tourism, Sindo Guinarte, points out that the main objectives are “the deseasonalization and the increase in overnight stays”, which are linked to certain tourism policies such as “favoring congress tourism” and promoting “international tourism from distant source markets ” such as American or Asian.
In addition, he adds that they are working to develop a local pact for sustainable tourism, in order to maintain tourist activity but preserve citizen life in the neighborhoods.
SOLUTIONS FOR BNG
The BNG candidate, Goretti Sanmartín, is especially focused on one objective: “to establish population in the old area”.
To do this, it proposes the declaration of the historic center as an “area saturated with gift shops”; the purchase by the city council of “certain empty commercial premises” to make them available to people who promote traditional businesses; the mobilization of the empty housing stock in the city; the creation of a municipal rental housing park through rehabilitation; help lines for soundproofing and energy insulation of buildings; awareness campaigns for tourists; o strengthen the Food Market; among other measures.
THE PPDG BET
From the PPdeG, the candidate Borja Verea considers that the houses for tourist use “are not to blame for the lack of housing” in the city and is also committed to making empty houses available to people.
The mobilization of these empty homes for rent, as well as bonuses for students; rehabilitation of the historic center; a regulation to divide larger apartments into several smaller ones; a specific team for attracting national and international events; the creation of the Compostela Tourism table that brings together the entire sector; a Tourism Observatory or the promotion of Holy Week and the gastronomy of the city are some of the proposals of the popular ones.
OPEN COMPOST INITIATIVES
Finally, in Compostela Aberta, Marta Lois is committed to creating a local fund for the promotion of sustainable tourism, the creation of a citizen forum on coexistence and tourism, a moratorium on the opening of gift shops, reinforcing the inspection of illegal tourist apartments or promote Compostela as an LGTBIQ destination, and friendly with families, vegans or pets. EFE
The entry The challenge of Santiago de Compostela: the balance between tourism and life in the neighborhoods was first published in EFE Noticias.