# we've been looking forward to showing you this place, because this is... barcelona. barcelona, exactly. this is a fantastic place. this city has a long, proud tradition of bold urban change. in the 1800s, one of the greatest urbanization projects in history began here. the word "urbanization" was coined here. barcelona saw the 1992 summer olympics as an opportunity for transformation. this old, industrial city opened itself to the mediterranean and reinvented itself in the process. the barcelona that we all have in our heads today is less than 30 years old.

on the one hand, barcelona is a role model for cities everywhere, in so many different areas; on the other, it's a city that struggles with urban issues on a scale unlike many places in the world: gentrification, housing, pollution, and - the elephant in the room here - mass tourism, which puts an enormous strain on the daily lives of the citizens. we come here all the time, and i love this proud and independent place. so what do you say, lulu? are we ready to dive deep into barcelona and discover a city that's different than the one that we know? let's do it, daddy. let's do it.

- yes, barcelona is one of the hottest destinations on the planet. world-renowned for its party scene and a cityscape offering one picturesque setting after another. it's almost too perfect. if you haven't been there, you want to go. it's that kind of city. but if we look past the tourism appeal and focus on daily life of the locals, the cracks and challenges of life in barcelona become all too visible: high unemployment, unaffordable housing and infrastructural failures are impacting liveability. traffic congestion is wreaking havoc on the health of the citizens. thankfully, the spirit of urban planning is still very much alive here. barcelona was the birthplace of one of the greatest

urbanism projects in history. in the 19th century, this industrial city was already plagued by pollution and overpopulation. so visionary engineer ildefons cerdá designed a system where city blocks would provide better housing services, maximize green space, improve air circulation and reduce traffic - which was horse-drawn carriages at the time. his project created the foundations of a unique urban structure and revolutionized the way that we look at cities today. the challenges have changed, at least partially, and, well, new solutions are needed. i'm eager to see what the citizens of barcelona are doing to tackle their modern urban battles. would you say that this is a life-sized city, barcelona? it is. it is, for sure it is, because it's compact and mixed; it has a human scale. you can cross it, by walking,

in an hour, which is quite amazing. but at the same time it's at risk because of gentrification and mass tourism. we should protect, not only its shape, but also its content, its human fabric, social fabric, which is at risk. - architect david bravo works around the clock to make barcelona a more livable city, advising on numerous urban planning projects, from housing to public space. now we are la barceloneta, which is an amazing neighbourhood because it's a perfect example of a compact city. you can hear birds singing. the sounds here, the sound landscape, is very beautiful. you can hear someone who is cooking an omelette; you can hear kids crying. you know, these are neighbourhood sounds. kids can play alone in the streets without the surveillance of their parents, because everybody knows them. in social terms,

it's really the city we need. how many people live here? 16,000. you have mainly working-class people living in this neighbourhood. still? yes, still, still, still. most of the homes here are only 30 square-metres. okay, wow. so it's not easy to gentrify. - barcelona is facing an uphill battle with the perpetual increase in tourism and real estate investments. the life-sized tissue here is fragile. the physical elements are attractive, but they need to be protected from mass development. look at this beautiful square. this is sant miquel square and it's human-scaled, you know? you can have children playing here; you can have people eating breakfast; it isn't noisy. you have many windows from houses, which have a good relationship with public space. why don't we copy these kinds of public spaces? - through major urban transformations, the olympics

helped turn barcelona into the city it is today: key areas of the city were revitalized, important infrastructure was modernized. but let's be aware, not all change is positive. here we had the old harbour, which was an industrial, enclosed site, and the main goal was to open barcelona towards the sea. let's reshape the relationship between the city and the mediterranean. now, people from barcelona, we were proud: suddenly we had tourism from everywhere that liked our city. this was amazing. but this broken relationship between the old city and the old harbour, which was really broken, was not rebuilt, because this is the beltway, la ronda, which was the main public expenditure for the olympic games urban transformation. and like barceloneta neighbourhood, which has a really good relationship with the sea - a mediterranean relationship, here we see an example of how modern urban planning

in the 20th century has been betraying this idea of the relationship between the mediterranean city and the sea, by means of these car infrastructures. this shows you that, in the 20th century, we have lost the art of making cities. we knew how to do good cities, the compact and mixed ones, that we need for the future: to tackle climate change or spatial segregation. but we have lost this art. what challenges does barcelona face to get back to the fabric or even the soul of the city? if i had to say it in a short tweet, i would say: more public housing and less private vehicles. that's the two main goals we have now, because in barcelona, we don't only have this dramatic scarcity of affordable housing, but we also have a dramatic figure with cars.

- a bold, new way to give the city back to its people is creating momentum across town. and this local leader, sílvia casorrán martos, is making it happen. a long-time resident of the poblenou neighbourhood, sílvia was at the forefront of a citizen's group that implemented the city's first superblock: an urban design that is part of the next wave of spatial solutions. - the father of the superblocks, salvador rueda, is a visionary urban planner and the director of barcelona's urban ecology agency. in the tradition of ildefons cerda, rueda imagined

the superblocks as a way to humanize cities. the basic idea is to delineate a large area of roughly three blocks by three blocks as multi-use space. this means that cyclists and pedestrians are given equal priority to cars. non-resident automobile thru-traffic is diverted. the goal? to reduce traffic in the city and give citizens a chance to truly enjoy it. did i mention that this means reducing air and noise pollution, as well? not to mention strengthening social fabric, community engagement, pedestrian mobility... and the list goes on! what about the general critique when you mess with a road in a good way, meaning you get rid of the cars, that you're just pushing the cars to the perimeter, and maybe more cars, more pollution. how have you tackled the critique about that? you're sort of pushing the problem into somebody else's neighbourhood.

change of level? yes. woah, traffic lights! yeah. not needed. - not everyone was in favour of the concept of superblocks, at first. opposition raled, residents protested. many were worried it would complicate things for their cars. businesses voiced their concerns about the complexity of unloading goods. and, of course, people rightfully complained about the fact that they should have been consulted. i get it, change can be a little scary. but thanks to the neighbourhood association "col7lectiu superilla poblenou," people began

to see the potential behind this new opportunity for public space. when the matter finally settled, the city built a more permanent playground, planted several green areas, and put in picnic tables. sometimes all you need is a little push... this was a pilot project, and it had some growing pains because people were testing things out, but it seems to have worked if the city of barcelona is now investing money in other superblocks. so it has been, in a way, a success. yeah. okay, they're coming to you? okay, so that's changed. yeah, i know, right?

how are you doing? good. was it fun? yeah. what'd you do? we just skated around the park and the block. the superblock, yeah. - spaces like this, that are safe and accessible, where i can actually bring my daughter and feel a sense of community... well, that used to be the norm here. the historic centre was once a very life-sized district as well. that is until tourism hit like few other places in the world. in 1990, 1.7 million tourists visited the city. great! in 2017 - are you ready for this? that figure was 32 million , roughly 20 times the local population. it's more than the annual number of tourists that visit greece.

barcelona was recently named the most polluted port in europe, with the highest amount of pollutants coming from cruise ships. barcelona's increase in tourism over the last 20 years was absolutely crazy, exponential. it changed the whole way of living in the centre, all the shops, all the housing conditions, a lot of aspects that made life harder for the people living here. - martí cusó is a member of the assembly of neighborhoods for sustainable tourism, the abts. it was established in 2015, after a year of major protests against the negative impacts of tourism on barcelonan society. what was it like growing up in this neighbourhood? this is my mother. oh, it's your mother. hola. how are you? how many generations of your family grew up here? my family - four generations

four, right here in this neighbourhood here? yes, in this neighbourhood and not far from here, and in the st. james square. okay, yeah, yeah. nice to meet you. and you, a pleasure. it was a good childhood, actually. i usually would play in the street or with my friends, a normal life as in any other neighbourhood. so it was a real neighbourhood, it wasn't so touristy then. as in any other city, just another neighbourhood. but of course, now it's not as easy for the children to play in the streets, because of overcrowding, commercialization, public space occupation by private companies and private operations. it's difficult now for the children to have a normal life here. this was a school when i was a child. this was your school? yeah. and the interesting thing about this school is that the playground used by the children of the school is a public space, a square. so what are the barriers for? yeah, exactly. the barriers are to prevent tourists from invading the space for children. really?

yeah. where do you go from here, you know? yeah, exactly. this is a desperate solution. i don't think it's a good solution at all. i mean, it's maybe a needed solution, at the moment, since the densification is such that the children cannot play in the street. but of course, in the long term, you prefer solutions that go to the root of the problem. - because of the massive number of tourists, the citizens of barcelona are having a hard time gaining access to their own city. the streets are packed, parks and squares are full, restaurants are overbooked, local bars rapidly become tourist hang-outs. outsiders, to put it simply, are posing a serious threat to the social fabric of this city. the problem in barcelona is not the kind of tourism we receive, but the number of tourists we receive, and the weight tourism has on the economy of the city. these are real problems for barcelona. of course, we have a lot of tourists coming here for different things, we have many kinds of tourism

here in barcelona, but if you come here, for example, to see museums, you are also having a negative effect on overcrowding the public space, overcrowding transportation, polluting the air with tourist ships or with planes. you are staying in airbnb's or hotels that were previously people's homes. the effects are everywhere, with any kind of tourism we receive. they say they create jobs, they create money for the economy, but we should ask them: where is this money going? companies get big, big benefits from tourism, but they are not socializing, they are not spreading this benefit to the public. for instance, they are paying the worst salaries in barcelona now, and they are gaining a lot of money. they make the most money, and they spend the least on the citizens and the workers. exactly, exactly. - depending on where you stay in barcelona, you're charged a tourism tax that ranges from 0.65 cents to over 2 euros per night. and that is set to increase. for now,

that generates roughly 30 million euros a year in revenue. now, you'd think the city would invest that money into its infrastructure, better housing, and maybe reducing pollution. but nope. it all just goes straight back into promoting tourism in a city that really doesn't need help attracting visitors. but its activists are finally speaking out on how that revenue should be spent. martí, you have 30 million tourists a year here. i'm trying to figure out - i get what you're saying, man, but how do you get that number down? we have to tackle the tourism industry that is responsible for the negative effects we are having right now. this means, for example, making them pay more in taxes than they are paying now, to socialize their money; better urban planning, to stop the auto industry from growing in barcelona. hotel industry, apartments airbnb, cruise ships,

we can control these, put limits. there are very specific points that tourists go to. what about spreading it out? they don't want to reduce the tourism in the centre and put it into other places. they want to keep the same tourist amount in the centre and increase in other areas that have not tourist-ified yet. a focus in the centre.. pardon, my family again! hello, how are you? this is my aunt. so it's maybe not so surprising to see them in your neighbourhood, but it's surprising to be able to spot them among all the tourists. that's probably more of a challenge. that's the communal life i talked about. so do you ever think about moving? no. at least not yet. some barcelonans, and some friends of mine that don't live here, they tell me i'm crazy to live here. but that's because, as i said, we have a big community of people living here, and i feel comfortable here, but i feel the need

to fight against these problems, because i see this affecting the life of the people, and causing a lot of people from my community to leave. and i don't want to, so... i think with abts we raised awareness of this problem with the people four years ago: we started to demonstrate, to do a lot of actions, to make people be aware of these problems, and now tourism is one of the first problems of the population in barcelona, according to polls from the city council. so the problem is here. we only need politicians to act. - if there's something the citizens of barcelona know how to do, it's pushing back against bad policymaking. there's a long tradition of protest in the city, and in the country. so it's no surprise that spain inspired the worldwide occupy movement with the indignados, the indignants. in 2011, millions of citizens occupied squares

across the nation to protest against the financial and political institutions' handling of the008 economic crisis. this might be a good day for a classic barcelonprotest. i've been told to meet outside the train station here at el prat de llobregat just outside of barcelona, and i'm going to meet some people who are going to fight for a very important issue. santi, hey. hi, how are you? good to see you. i was just told to meet outside a train station, right? no more information. no more information. but tell me, who are all these people? what group do they represent? yeah, we are the pah, which is the plataforma de afectados por la hipoteca, which means the platform for people affected by mortgages, for the mortgage crisis, although we work with any kind of housing situation. - santi mas is a spokesperson for pah, a citizens group created in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. spain was hit pretty hard, and the troubles are far from over.

it's estimated that from 2009 to 2017, more than half a million people were evicted from their homes because of mortgage foreclosures. during those years, pah was able to stop more than 2000 evictions and negotiate rents and rights for thousands of families. the situation of the housing is that we only have 1.5% of public housing, compared to the rest of europe, which is 15%, 20% - in barcelona, 1.5%. so, what happened? how come we don't have... you, all these families here, would be living in public housing in any other country in europe. why not in spain? what has happened? in spain, if you cannot pay your mortage, they will take your house, plus you will still owe the bank a whole lot of money, because they allow them to auction it only up to 70% of the value. the other 30% of the value, you have to pay for it. - these protesters here are all facing eviction. they're fighting back against blackstone, an international

private equity firm. blackstone has bought something like 40,000 distressed mortgages from catalunya bank, a bank that received a 12-billion euro bailout from spanish taxpayers in the wake of the financial crisis... yep, that is exactly how that sounds. but according to the protestors, blackstone is refusing to negotiate with homeowners who need to restructure their mortgages. this is the fifth time that we've come here. three of those times were international actions; this fight can only be won if we fight internationally, and blackstone knows that wherever they go they're going to find some who's going to point to them for their activities. here, we were not expecting

the gate to be open. they tried to close it very quickly when they saw who was accessing, but then we broke in and now we're inside. when we're inside, we have way more power to negotiate with them. the back-and-forth has begun. these are catalonian police, but they're now negotiators, mediators, in this dispute. so how's this working out for you there, santi? well, they are trying to get us... the police is trying to mediate, but they only accept two people to enter for the negotiation, and we have here 25 families with different cases, and we're saying, okay, from different paths. so we have seven paths represented here, so we want to have the meeting with at least the seven members of each path. the police are asking us to leave; if not, they're going to identify us and they will press charges. but they will go in the press, kicking us out,

and the police will look bad also. your guy is coming back now. so let's see. - blackstone and pah are embroiled in a back-and-forth negotiation process to ensure that all demands are met. but here's the catch - they're only letting in one chapter representative at a time. pah is demanding to have one mediator present at all meetings, so that information doesn't get lost and families are fairly represented. through their lobbying and protests, these fine people have managed to change the law. thanks to them, vulnerable people - who fit certain criteria - can only be charged between 10 and 18% of their income for rent. it's a step in the right direction, but there is still much work to be done. so this is one means, right, protesting, trying to get a meeting inside and insisting on your right to protest.

what other means do you use to forward the movement? we need to lobby. we need to change the laws. we have written laws that have been approved by the catalan parliament, and this is a law that is affecting them and here, today, we are asking them to follow the law and provide an affordable rent for families. i think we have to be very knowledgeable of the capacity for change inside of each one of us. if you believe in that, then go to your closest housing organization or civil organization, choose your topic, get involved there, and you will see that changes happen. and it's beautiful to see that. we got the meeting that we were asking for. the agreement we got with the police is that if they gave us the meeting we requested, then we would wait outside, so now the meeting is taking place and i'm sure we'll find some good solutions. and now, in order to make

our commitment, we need to be outside. so we need to know what happens in the meetings, but that's a victory, man. thank you very much. nice one, well done. awesome. - the finance industry is a huge, powerful entity that can be overwhelming. but as these protests have shown, change is possible when you rally together. having a secure place to live is essential to the social fabric and well-being of a city. and having a steady job to afford said housing is equally important. cities have welcomed migrants for millennia, and barcelona is no different. but since 2015, this city has had an official policy to welcome migrants, to encourage them to register, officially, so they have access to health services, language courses, and whatnot. but one of the primary challenges faced by migrants everywhere is getting a job, developing a skillset. and like i've seen in other european cities, regular citizens are stepping in and creating projects that make a difference.

hi, hello. - martin habiague is the founder and director of mescladís, an organization that gives free work training to migrants in the service industry. the training includes theory, practical classes, social skill building and client experience at mescladis' two restaurants. who comes here to learn?

- in 2017, 23% of barcelona's population was foreign-born. in that year alone, it's estimated that there were some 15,000 asylum seekers and refugees who arrived in the city. with mescladis, martin is helping these people with one of the most crucial aspects of building a new life: finding work.

- martin's project was self-sustainable from the get go - roughly 90% of the operational costs are generated through his restaurants' revenue. integrating migrants is a long and complicated process, but with the ongoing community support, the project remains totally feasible. a life-sized effort if i've ever seen one. how does the hospitality industry respond? are they positive about the opportunity to help migrants who come through your course and give them an internship?

- people from all over the world move to barcelona to call it home, either for the short-term, or permanently. regardless, the city's biggest challenge in the coming years is to find a way for all of these people: locals, migrants and visitors to cohabit peacefully, while being able to actually navigate the growing city. barcelona is a great city for public transport. in 2018, there were 610 million trips on buses, trains, metro and trams. they had a record of 26.8 million trips alone on the trams in 2016. this is a city that understands the importance of public transport. that's what makes it so much more bizarre that the tram stops dead in its tracks right here. and you've got to go over here, somewhere down this main boulevard, the primary spine between east and west in barcelona, where the tram network