I've been traveling over the last week - moving from the warmth of Los Angeles to spend the next month in the cold of Scotland, and after the ridiculous heat of the summer / fall - you bet I'm thankful for it.
My wife and I are lucky in that we both work remote and have done for years. We were early nomads, spending at least two months a year in Barcelona starting back in 2015 and yet we haven't been back for a while. We're now spending more time in Scotland and while there are many reasons for this - we've been reflecting recently on how the vibe of Barcelona changed over the years.
The first 3 years, 2015 to 2017 were magical. We stayed in a groovy little flat in Vila de Gràcia, on Carrer Progrés, surrounded by locals, walking to stores and buying groceries every day, beer was 2 euros a pop and everything was a 1/3rd of the price of LA. ~while the locals - the Catalans - were tough to get to know unless you spoke Catalan (which we didn't,) they weren't unpleasant or unfriendly and we felt very much at home.
We started detecting a change around 2018 and 19 - not only were prices going up rapidly, there was a shift in the vibe of the city. Sure it was getting busier - not that we really saw that up in Gràcia, but there were less smiles from the locals. In the past we'd walk down the street and exchange nods and greetings with pensioners in their chairs, but this started to disappear, replaced with blank looks and the occasional frown.
We missed our Barcelona trip in 2020 due to Covid but were back in '21 and '22 and by then everything had changed. The anti-tourist graffiti in the town had dramatically increased. The night before one of our favorite festivals - Festa Major de Gràcia - where the communities compete to see who can decorate their street more outlandishly - the slogan of "Tourists Go Home" appeared all across the town.
And we get it - there's the balance between the benefits of the tourist dollar and the inability to buy a place in the location your family has lived in for generations. The city have put in legislation to stop the rampant spread of airbnb's and have put greater restrictions on how properties are rented, but I supsect it's ging to take a while before the city finds a new equilibrium.
For now - we'll stop adding to the problem and put Barcelona on hold. We bought a flat here in Perth, Scotland and will be spending more of our time in this beautiful old city. And yes, it is dramatically different to the warmth of Barcelona but - what it lacks in temperature, it more than makes up for in the warmth of the welcome you get from the people that live here.
