Park Güell is starting to recover the pace of visitors after the drop in tourism due to the pandemic. Despite the signs of improvement, the numbers of public attendance are still far from those before the outbreak of covid. At that time, an annual volume of around 9 million users was counted, compared to the 4.65 million, including tourists and residents, that were registered during 2022. Barcelona City Council explains this decline due to the change in the access model which was applied during the pandemic to avoid overcrowding.
With the arrival of the virus, and after months of confinement, the site reopened in July 2020, and the monumental regulated area was expanded from 1.7 hectares to 12 hectares. If in 2019 about 3.5 million tourists paid to visit the central area of ??the park with the famous dragon staircase and the viewpoint with the unique trencadís benches in Plaça de la Natura, another 5.5 million did not buy the entrance to enter it, but they walked around the part above, then free access. After the expansion of the monumental payment area, the municipal coffers now also collect more money, as more tickets are sold, with the presence of 4.2 million tourists last year.
Some data that the councilor for Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition and the district of Gràcia, Eloi Badia, assessed positively yesterday and, in his opinion, demonstrate the return to “normality” in this fantasy space designed by Antoni Gaudí , world cultural heritage of humanity by Unesco since 1984. According to Badia, with these numbers, the municipal objectives aimed at reducing “tourist pressure” in this enclave of the city and “enhancing its cultural and neighborhood uses” are met. .
As for the residents, 450,000 can go to this space for free thanks to exclusive time slots for residents of the adjacent neighborhoods in the morning and afternoon. To these figures must be added those who enter without paying with prior registration to Gaudir Més, with 155,000 registrations last year. Badia also pointed out that more than twenty cultural activities were organized in the park in 2022, with the participation of nearly 8,000 people.
On the other hand, Park Güell’s strategic plan, begun in 2018, maintains continuity with a planned investment of 16 million generated from ticket revenues until 2026, the year in which the events commemorating the centenary of the Gaudí’s death and the opening as a public park after the Barcelona City Council bought it for more than three million of the old pesetas from the heirs of Eusebi Güell. The industrialist and great patron of Gaudí commissioned the modernist architect to build an urbanization for bourgeois families inspired by British residential parks, hence the k for Park.
Among the future actions, the purchase of a hundred-year-old house in the vicinity of the site to convert it into a municipal facility, where the neighborhood and cultural association La Miranda is now rented, stands out. The recovery of a green area at Font del Carbó and the improvement works in neighboring streets are further examples of interventions.
At the same time, the master plans for conservation, maintenance and infrastructure are being implemented to protect the architectural and natural heritage of this place. Plans that provide for the renewal of the lighting, especially in the darkest areas of the site.
