“We have to start controlling tourist numbers in Mouraria, Sintra, Madeira…”
With neighbouring Spain very much in the news for the number of locals demanding limits on mass tourism, similar calls are starting to echo around Portugal, powered by local authorities.
In Lisbon, Miguel Coelho, president of the parish council of Santa Maria Maior, “recognises the necessity for limits”, writes Correio da Manhã tabloid today.
“The parish, which covers the Chiado, Baixa area, Castelo, Alfama and Mouraria has 10,000 inhabitants, but 300,000 people circulate on a daily basis. It is a very heavy weight of human beings”, he said. “Measures are required for traffic, for the tuk-tuks, rental accommodations and hotels. Measures not in the sense of banning people from circulating, but of having less activities connected to tourism”.
Bernardo Trindade, former secretary of State for Tourism and current president of AHP, the Portuguese association of hoteliers, said: “We should start with controlling tourist flows in places like Mouraria, Jerónimos (the stunning ‘must visit’ Lisbon monastery), Sintra and the peaks of Madeira”.
But there are also those who believe tourists are ‘precious’. “I can’t see how we can say we have too many tourists”, Manuel Sousa Lopes president of the association for ‘dynamising the Baixa Pombalina’ area of Lisbon, argues – stressing tourism accounts for 70% of the revenue of local restaurants.
The truth nonetheless is that this is a debate that is ‘spreading across the globe’, touching many popular tourist destinations – from Machu Picchu in Peru, to Venice in Italy, the Acropolis in Greece, Amsterdam and on to Mount Fuji in Japan.
Amsterdam, which imposed a limit years ago on the number of people it could take, is now prohibiting the construction of new hotels, and limiting overnight stays.
Spain however has been particularly strident in its demands for controls, not least because of the amount of water it is ‘losing’ through tourism at a time of increasing water scarcity.
