Neighbors of the bunkers in the Carmel neighborhood report that the place now attracts more visitors after its closing time at seven-thirty in the afternoon than while it remains open, that lately tourists have been crowding the roads and clearings of the surrounding mountain, that the overcrowding of the Turó de la Rovira viewpoint only worsens, that they can no longer even walk the dog.
Montse, the neighbor on Mühlberg Street who, a few weeks ago, had a few drunken strangers steal a good part of her laundry – her son’s work clothes and a pair of tracksuits – details that practically every afternoon, after the corresponding closing of the fences erected last year around the anti-aircraft batteries, visitors continue to approach the area. And well equipped with cans of beer, bottles of white wine, bags of chips and a few portable speakers, they gather along the mountain paths, through the small clearings that open below, some even on the terrace of one of the the little houses that stand there…
The City Council’s efforts to stop the saturation of the Carmel bunkers, so that people come to the place attracted by its history and culture and not so much to take a lot of selfies with a spectacular view of Barcelona, ??are not giving great results. The City Council did not find a way to combat the force of social networks. The objective of closing the bunkers was precisely to alleviate crowding. Summer is already looking complicated.
“People can’t even take their dogs for a walk anymore,” this neighbor continues, “because there’s no room on the roads, you have to make your way all the time, and at times they don’t have room either and they disperse even more, because they’re already So many that they already go down to the wooden bridge, much further down. And during the day everything looks very picture postcard, but at night people continue to come too. At this rate this summer is going to be very hard.” Given the little attention that the Urban Police has been paying to this area for some time, some jump over the fence and sneak into the bunkers. But most visitors prefer to settle in a hole in the mountain and have a picnic there.
“The truth is that some do what they really want,” Montse continues. They even threw down a fence that we put up to block the way to the houses. So a wall in my house became a kind of pee can. This lot is supposed to belong to the City Council, but it is not attended to. A neighbor put on seven padlocks, because so much bustle of people at night causes a lot of unrest. Here we had always lived like in a town in the middle of the countryside. In March we already warned the people of the City Council that all this was going to get worse, and they told us that they would take measures, but until now they have done nothing.”
The influx of visitors grew so much that the problems getting to the Carmel neighborhood by public transportation are also getting worse. These days the crowds on buses on lines 22 and 24 extend into the night. They arrive at Plaça Lesseps so crowded that sometimes the drivers cannot allow everyone waiting for them to get on. So some travelers sneak in by forcing the last door of the vehicle. Faced with so much impudence, some drivers, visibly fed up with the situation and somewhat stressed, stop the bus until the smart ones get off. Elderly people complain that the seats reserved for them are occupied. The City Council is increasing the services of several lines in mountain neighborhoods in order to alleviate these problems.
From the Consell Veïnal del Turó de la Rovira they emphasize that very soon they will again mount protests in the streets, which are already coordinating with other entities from other corners of the city, such as Vallcarca, Can Baró and La Salut, to denounce the growing saturation of the mountain neighborhoods of Barcelona.
