A comparison between Madrid and Barcelona
A series like Oh, Europe could no longer be made now. All capitals are the same. I have spent more days in Madrid than in Barcelona in recent months for work reasons. Enough time to realize that the same thing is happening in the capital of Spain that started in Barcelona with the Olympic Games. The world has discovered the city. And what happens happens. In recent months, hotel prices have skyrocketed and the image at all hours in the center of Madrid is people dragging their suitcases and tourists taking photos as early as 9 am of any detail that catches their attention.
Tourism in Madrid
Madrid is experiencing the same thing as Barcelona, 30 years behind schedule. A little less. Because there are those who theorize that this started with the pandemic, when Isabel Díaz Ayuso turned the community and, specifically, the capital into the great leisure center of southern Europe. He does so much. Some take advantage of the Games or Real Madrid to sell themselves. Others, a global pandemic or Real Madrid. Which is not the same, even if it looks like it.
The problem of tourism in Madrid
The problem for the people of Madrid, as the people of Barcelona know, is that this is bread for today and hunger for tomorrow. Because by now, they already know how this works. First, foreigners fall in love with a city and go there on vacation in hotels. After that, they no longer go to hotels, but go to apartments rented to tourists. The clever ones, to have these flats available and more and more, evict the tenants. Vulture funds see the business. Tourists give way to foreigners with money who buy some property. Between them, the price soars. And little by little, those who lived there are leaving and their children are already leaving half an hour from the center, hopefully, to pay a price with which they might have been able to live where they were born and grew up.
Tourism in Barcelona
Some take advantage of the Games or Barça to sell themselves; others, a global pandemic or Barça. Which is not the same, even if it looks like it. And the city centers are occupied by hotels, franchises and tourists. The natives live elsewhere. And we have some more or less magnificent storefronts where only the rich can live. And this has not only happened in Catalonia or Spain. Find a Roman living in Rome. And what happened in Barcelona will happen in Madrid, even faster. And what do you want to do with it?, they will say. Of course, I don’t have the solution, but maybe and just maybe it happens to regulate, at the very least, the price and access to housing. And this, and you see that there are people who have made a noise, and you see that Spain was about to be captured by the bubble that kept inflating and inflating, it has been delayed for decades.
