The yawning gap between locals’ and visitors’ consumption is stoking long-standing resentments ahead of an election.
As rain poured into Catalonia’s parched capital, the tourists did, too.
Yet while a damp April brought some relief to the drought-stricken Spanish region — which has been living under rain-starved skies for over three years — the crescendoing tourist season did not.
After all, spring is when visitors start spilling into Barcelona’s streets each morning from cruise ships, hotels and Airbnbs — and consuming considerably more of the city’s water than the average resident, threatening to push Barcelona’s water supply to the breaking point.
The disconnect has locals fulminating. While Catalan municipalities have faced water consumption limits since the region declared a drought emergency in early February, the tourism sector has largely escaped restrictions.
They used a lot of words to say that it’s recently rained in Barcelona and the tourist season is beginning. Then they said tourists use more water than residents, with absolutely no indication of how that may be the case.
Then the article just… Stopped.
Did we read different articles or something? They provide numbers about how much regular residents use compared to hotel guests, and explain why that may be the case (lack of regulation/limits in the tourism sector). It even has a small section on how the issue could be handled.
Did you perhaps just read the small paragraph that gets added to the post on lemmy?