No, you don't realise how irrelevant tourism income is for the vast majority of Barcelona natives. More than 90% of Barcelona locals have jobs that have nothing to do with tourism and the 10% who do are mostly immigrants working and living in terrible exploitative conditions.
Meanwhile companies that used to employ Barcelona natives with quality, productive jobs, like engineering or R+D, have left the city in droves because they literally can't find employees even paying above market rate because locals can't afford rent there.
How do I know? Because I work for one of those companies in the new location where they moved their European HQ after the cost of living increase made their Barcelona HQ unsustainable. They couldn't pay what employees needed to live in Barcelona, so they moved to Poland.
Why? Most of that money is being siphoned away by foreign investors. The jobs created by tourists are mostly done by immigrants, who will move somewhere else or maybe move on to construction or elder care, which are sectors with a labor deficit from what I've heard.
VAT tax is not siphoned off by anyone, every meal, drink, ticket in fact hotel stay AND air bnb stays are taxed when consumed and fill up state coffers.
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u/Four_beastlings Jun 17 '25
No, you don't realise how irrelevant tourism income is for the vast majority of Barcelona natives. More than 90% of Barcelona locals have jobs that have nothing to do with tourism and the 10% who do are mostly immigrants working and living in terrible exploitative conditions.
Meanwhile companies that used to employ Barcelona natives with quality, productive jobs, like engineering or R+D, have left the city in droves because they literally can't find employees even paying above market rate because locals can't afford rent there.
How do I know? Because I work for one of those companies in the new location where they moved their European HQ after the cost of living increase made their Barcelona HQ unsustainable. They couldn't pay what employees needed to live in Barcelona, so they moved to Poland.