by Pádraic Gilligan, Co-founder, SoolNua Consulting

Barcelona, Reputation and the DNA of Cities

Mateu Hernández Maluquer, CEO of This Is Barcelona — the newly re-articulated identity of Turisme de Barcelona — has the kind of presence that makes you sit up without quite knowing why. Tall, impeccably turned out in a well structured suit but somehow disarmingly informal, he carries himself with that particular Catalan blend of confidence and understatement. The Brompton bicycle that he brings into meetings with him helps, of course. So does the slightly windswept hair. But what strikes you most is not the style — it is the sense of alignment between the man and the city he represents.

At the recent CEO gathering of City Destinations Alliance aka CityDNA, held in Barcelona itself, and moderated by my colleague Gráinne and I, Mateu did not so much deliver a presentation as tell a story — the story of a city that has gone to the edge of tourism exuberance and come back with something more mature, more reflective, more self-aware.

There were sixty DMO leaders in the room, many representing cities whose annual marketing budgets would hardly match what Barcelona spends on promotional swag and  tchotchkes. And yet the atmosphere was not one of disparity but of recognition. Because beneath the scale, the dynamics were familiar. The pressures were familiar. The questions were ours too.

Barcelona is not exceptional in its challenges. It is simply further along the curve.

When Popularity Becomes Pressure

Barcelona has lived through the full modern arc of urban tourism — the Olympic glow, the design renaissance, the digital amplification, the Airbnb surge, the cruise swell, the Instagram crescendo. It became shorthand for urban cool, for Mediterranean energy, for Gaudí, gastronomy and global connectivity. And then, inevitably, the pendulum swung.

The water pistols aimed at visitors were more symbolic than threatening, but symbols matter. They told us that something in the social contract had frayed. That the narrative of tourism as something always and instrinsically good no longer rang true in every neighbourhood.

In response, the city did not retreat into defensiveness. It did not double down on promotion. Instead, it asked a question that hung in the air of our CEO session like a provocation:

Can tourism save us from tourism?

It is an audacious question, because it assumes both agency and responsibility. It assumes that tourism is not an external force imposed upon a city but an instrument that can be tuned, tweaked, re-strung.

From Volume to Value

The resulting Reputation Plan is not performative but structural. A cap of 152,000 tourism beds. A massive contraction and eventual elimination of short-term rentals. A steady increase in the bed tax from €8 to €15 per person per night by 2029 — a move that will see a family of five contribute close to €250 over a long weekend (still, it should be said, significantly less that the same family would pay in taxes and extras in New York City or Las Vegas).

But the genius of the approach lies not in the tax itself; it lies in the transparency around its use. Infrastructure. Public space. Cultural institutions. Business events capacity. The implicit message to residents is simple: tourism pays its way.

There is €700 million earmarked for expanded MICE / convention infrastructure, affirming the strategic importance of business events, and €500 million directed towards museums and galleries, reinforcing culture as civic backbone rather than visitor afterthought. Major global events — Ryder Cup, FIFA World Cup, Tour de France — are not chased as trophies but curated as catalysts.

From “Visit …” to “This is …”

Perhaps the most revealing shift of all lies in the move from “Visit Barcelona” to “This Is Barcelona.” At first glance it appears merely semantic, a tidy brand refresh, but listen more closely and you can hear the tectonic plates moving beneath it.

“Visit Barcelona” is an imperative. It carries the cadence of persuasion, the slight desperation of a street hawker in a crowded agora, calling out above the din, urging the passer-by to step closer, to buy, to consume. It is outward-facing, promotional, decisively “pick me!” — a city projecting itself into the world in the hope of being chosen.

“This Is Barcelona,” by contrast, sits in the indicative mood. It does not shout. It does not cajole. It does not plead. It simply states. And in that statement there’s an unmistakable shift in power and poise. The city is no longer performing for approval; it is presenting itself with calm assurance. This is who we are. This is how we live. This is what we value. Take us as we are — or don’t — but we will not distort ourselves for the sake of volume.

In grammatical terms, the move from imperative to indicative may seem minor. In civic terms, it’s transformative. It signals a city stepping into blue ocean territory, and into self-definition. It reframes the visitor not as a target to be captured but as a guest invited into an already coherent story. The locus of control shifts subtly but decisively back to the city.

Barcelona in the CityDNA Context

At CityDNA in Budapest earlier this year we spoke of fragility, of funding uncertainties and the vulnerability of DMOs in shifting political climates. In Tórshavn we leaned into the idea of a regenerative visitor ecosystem and the co-creation of a shared manifesto for European cities. Barcelona feels like the bridge between the two: theory translated into policy, manifesto translated into action.

The language across CityDNA has been shifting from “visitor economy” to “visitor ecosystem.” Just like the shift in Barcelona’s slogan, the change of vocabulary matters. An economy extracts and measures. An ecosystem balances and sustains. Barcelona’s recalibration reflects precisely that evolution. Resident satisfaction now sits alongside economic output. Management carries equal weight to marketing. The DMO emerges not simply as promoter but as mediator, steward, civic partner.

This is assured, confident, adult tourism minus the adolescent jostling and posturing, the inflated, self-referential rhetoric and the tiresome bullying that often goes with size and scale.

This is Barcelona.