Ban what? City-scale tourism and immigration? How? Passport controls on the city borders? Walls? We are not at this stage yet.
If you live in a nice city (and Barcelona is a great city, truly a world's treasure), it attracts tourists, by definition. I don't think anything can be done about that (except maybe ban AirBnB and introduce hotel tax -- but they will just live in places nearby and drive in by cars). You can also of course make your city less nice (by riots, crime, graffiti, trash, whatever), but this is shooting oneself in a foot.
The "problem" has no solution. Great cities are attractive, people want to go there, and have the legal right to.
Locals can do things to regulate tourism by economic means, but you can't say "don't come", except on state level. The city is not your property.
I don't know why you think that. Some cities (Venice for example) are already implementing controls to limit demand. Turn the political heat up and it can happen anywhere.
Venice is unique, it is an island with a single bridge connecting it to mainland. It is easy to put a toll booth there. And at this point, it is more a city-wide museum than a living city anyway, the money will go to maintenance. The regulation is not there because of the protests of the residents, there are not many remaining.
These are fine, though don’t help much and bad for local economy and prosperity (tourists bring money and buy food and things from local businesses which employ local people and pay local taxes). “You can’t come here” is not fine, and thankfully infeasible.
The same logic should also work for states; people, however, are irrational in this regard.
>“You can’t come here” is not fine, and thankfully infeasible.
If a city feels its culture or inhabitants quality of life is being adversely affected by tourism then it is fine to control the numbers.
If you look at places like Venice part of the criticism was the hordes of people arriving that don't spend any money. They bring packed lunches and just clog the place up. There are plenty of products and services that manage demand by increasing prices, I can't see why these places should be any different.
If you live in a nice city (and Barcelona is a great city, truly a world's treasure), it attracts tourists, by definition. I don't think anything can be done about that (except maybe ban AirBnB and introduce hotel tax -- but they will just live in places nearby and drive in by cars). You can also of course make your city less nice (by riots, crime, graffiti, trash, whatever), but this is shooting oneself in a foot.
The "problem" has no solution. Great cities are attractive, people want to go there, and have the legal right to.
Locals can do things to regulate tourism by economic means, but you can't say "don't come", except on state level. The city is not your property.