Tourists warned as popular Spanish city to introduce more charges

Sign up to Simon Calder’s free journey e mail for knowledgeable recommendation and money-saving reductions

Get Simon Calder’s Travel e mail

Tourists might quickly be charged for visiting certainly one of Spain’s largest vacationer locations.

Those visiting Seville could quickly have to pay a price to discover the Plaza de Espana sq. – the construction that served as the set of the 1999 movie ‘The Phantom Menace’ of the Star Wars franchise, and can also be a sizzling spot of cultural life, internet hosting live shows, performs and vogue reveals.

The city corridor mentioned the plan is a part of a call to management vacationer overload in a public open area.

“We are planning to close the Plaza de Espana and charge tourists to finance its conservation and ensure its safety,” Mayor Jose Luis Sanz wrote in a publish on social media platform X, accompanied with a video displaying lacking tiles, broken facades and road distributors occupying alcoves and stairs.

Complete with a semicircular Neo-Moorish palatial construction framed with tall towers on each ends and 4 bridges over a moat, the Plaza is a part of a posh constructed for the 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition that was designed to mirror Spanishness in its structure and tiled decorations.

Thousands of individuals from all around the world go to it day by day, in horse-drawn carriages or on foot.

Although Sanz made clear that native residents would nonetheless be allowed free entry, many X customers, together with these from Seville, have been fast to criticise the plan.

“A tourism tax for ALL visitors provokes less debate and generates more income. Listen to the people, not the hoteliers,” wrote one consumer.

Another added: “What people want from you is a tourism tax and general regulation of mass tourism which is destroying our city”.

With more than three million vacationers a yr and a inhabitants of 700,000, Seville is the third most visited city in Spain, which in flip is among the world’s most visited nations, with tourism representing 13% of GDP.

Many cities are struggling to discover steadiness between much-needed tourism and sustaining their enchantment to residents. Italy’s lagoon city of Venice will introduce a trial price from April to restrict the variety of day trippers.