Overtourism in Barcelona: Jaume Collboni wants to punish cruise ship passengers

The Barcelona municipality is stepping up its open war against mass tourism by deciding to hit the ocean giants directly in the wallet. The mayor of the Catalan capital, Jaume Collboni, has officially announced his intention to imminently double the municipal taxes imposed on travelers arriving in the city by cruise ship, raising the rate from four to eight euros per person per day in the coming months of 2026.

This abrupt acceleration unilaterally breaks with the timetable initially revealed by the daily newspaper El País, which stated that the municipal authorities had previously agreed on a gradual and phased increase year after year until 2029.

“We are going to increase it from four to eight euros in the coming months, not over four years as we had agreed,” Jaume Collboni insisted, unequivocally adopting a highly dissuasive political stance by adding: “I want to discourage cruise ship passengers from arriving.”

Although the mayor did not provide all the technical details of this proposed regulation, the local press confirms that this measure surgically targets day cruisers, whom the municipality accuses of clogging public spaces during stopovers of less than twelve hours without generating substantial economic benefits for local businesses.

The underlying objective of the municipal administration is to stem the flow of transit passengers that are clogging Barcelona’s public transport system, while redirecting port activity towards « home-based » operations (headquarters), where travelers spend at least one night in a city hotel before boarding their ferry.

This tightening of taxes directly reflects the strategic decisions made at the end of 2025, when the Spanish metropolis—one of the world’s largest cruise ports with seven operational terminals, including private facilities resulting from major commercial partnerships, such as the brand-new MSC Cruises terminal inaugurated at the beginning of 2025—implemented a drastic plan to reduce its infrastructure.

This vast restructuring plan provides for the definitive reduction of the number of terminals from seven to five as well as a major technological modernization: the three most outdated public terminals (A, B and C) will be demolished at the end of 2026 in order to clear the way for a single new generation megastructure, a centralized public terminal capable of accommodating up to 7,000 passengers per day, equipped with shore power systems allowing cruise ships to shut down their engines to switch to a zero-emission port call model.