A clutch of fruit cups and a fresh juice might feel like a harmless holiday purchase. Multiply it by 23 million visits a year and you get La Boqueria, Barcelona's famous market off La Rambla, where the shopper mix has flipped from half locals in 2010 to roughly 80% tourists today. Many residents no longer bother going: it has shifted from a fresh-food market to, in effect, a tourist food court.

That story, told in a recent piece by Travel Tomorrow, sits at the sharp end of a wider argument about tourism and gentrification. The writer opens in an unnamed English market town within commuting distance of London, where decades of arrivals from the capital have pushed house prices beyond the reach of local families whose roots go back generations. Visitors who first come as tourists later buy homes — some as second properties rented out on Airbnb — and high-street rents rise to meet the spending power of day-trippers, squeezing out shops that serve residents. The point is not that tourists are villains; it is that when a place becomes more valuable as a destination than as a home, the people who make it worth visiting get priced out.

Hong Kong research cited in the piece adds a nuance: tourist-driven gentrification is not just ordinary gentrification in disguise. Shops catering to visitors can pay higher rents, so the more tourists an area gets, the faster traditional retailers close — a rent gap that tourism actively widens.

Barcelona is the counterattack worth watching. The city has flagged 16 oversaturated zones, including La Rambla and La Boqueria, and is responding with crowd sensors, cleaning crews, civic patrols, rerouted tourist buses and a cap of 15 people per tour group in the market. Officials are weighing a plan to spend part of the tourist tax on local commerce rather than gift shops, alongside rent support for businesses serving residents — building on bans on new tourist shops around hotspots like Sagrada Família and Park Güell.

The big change is still in the works: new rules, expected to be approved in late 2026 or early 2027, would require La Boqueria overall to cap prepared food at 50% of its offering and keep at least half for traditional products, with similar per-stall limits. Deputy mayor Jordi Valls has admitted the city is "reaching the limit" with visitor numbers but sees regulation, not bans, as the way forward — defending the brand rather than promoting it, and managing public space so the city works for everyone.

Why should travellers care? Because the choices we make on holiday are part of this equation. A takeaway smoothie in a residents' market or a souvenir shop over an old bakery is a small vote for a certain kind of city. If you want the places you love to visit to stay worth visiting, shop where locals shop, venture beyond the saturated zones, and support the businesses that keep a neighbourhood a neighbourhood. Responsible tourism's core idea — great places to live make great places to visit — only works if locals come first.