Shifting from short term to long term action in post-COVID touristic cities. Drift to exclusion in Seville and Malaga, Spain

In the last decades, the Spanish cities of Malaga and Seville have consolidated as destinations for cultural and urban tourism. The political commitment to position them as international destinations; rising the capacity of its transport infrastructure; increasing and diversification of tourist accommodation offer and focusing in the specialization of their historic centers; have transformed both cities and have made tourism a key factor in their post-industrial reconversion. However, at the same time, they have become fragile environments, not very resilient and a source of conflict and controversy. In the middle of the last decade, the first critical voices began to emerge from neighborhood movements, warning of the negative effects associated with the constant increase in visitors and the corresponding urban transformations. A situation that far from being limited to specific historic neighborhoods, has become generalized to the entire city. In the early stages these protests focused on the loss of local identity, the trivialization of the urban landscape or the problems of coexistence between tourists and local residents. Today, however, tourism is considered a phenomenon that puts the right to the city at risk. The precarious labor market caused by the economic monopoly of the touristic industry, the noise pollution and the opacity of the institutions associated with tourism, are some of the problems that several local associations are making visible, questioning the prevailing social and economic model and demanding different policies. It is precisely in this context that the debate around touristification makes evident the existence of other induced and highly relevant aspects for the future of the city, such as the expulsion from the neighborhood due to the increase in rents, the substitution of the traditional commercial fabric or the massification and privatization of public space. The Covid-19 pandemic, far from representing a turning point of these practices, puts at the center of the discussion not only the weakness of current urban structures, but also the society as a whole. Facing with a striking absence of the European Commission in the management of the emergency and a sounding lack of solidarity towards the hardest-hit countries, it is remarkable how it is promptly proposing to open “tourist corridors” to reactivate the economy. Risk management, the enhancement of public spaces, or the implementation of new city models seem necessary actions for an immediate future, although the first efforts of the municipal managers of Seville and Malaga aim to recover the pre-Covid situation as soon as possible. However, this “new normality” is unsustainable in a globalized context, and it seems to forget the need for hybrid, multifunctional and more articulated public spaces to respond to the greater physical distance that requires this post-emergency early phase. Through the analysis of direct observation, interviews with the agents involved, the analysis of the first actions promoted by both public managers and the solidarity networks that emerged during the confinement; a mapping of the transformations of public spaces and their conflicts will be carried out. We finally look at how recent theories on the cellular city, third places (Oldenburg, 2000), twenty-minute city models (Stanley, Stanley, and Davis), touristification (Harvey, 2013) and commoning (Kip) can offer different approaches to the needed transformations of these two cities.