Making sense of the square: Facing the touristification of public space through playful protest in Barcelona

Abstract

Drawing from assemblage thinking, this article explores the complexity of urban tourism conflicts. The case study of a playful urban intervention in Barcelona exhibits the connections that link place-based activism, local identity construction and sense of place in relation to the tourism development. The productive case study, called Fem Plaça (Let’s make the square), highlights the more proactive rather than merely reactive role of inhabitants. Moreover, it allows for a better understanding of protest as a series of relational, processual practices of empowerment, overcoming the efficiency rhetoric that values a process only for its final success. Finally, this study strives to expand the tourist analysis to the performance and performativity of the local people’s disaffection in urban contexts to ensure a broader comprehensiveness in the tourist academic field.