Case Study

Overtourism, Place Alienation and the Right to the City:

Insights from the Historic Centre of Seville, Spain

Published online 25 Jan 2020, Journal of Sustainable Tourism

https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1717504

Iban Diaz-Parra (main corresponding author)

[email protected]

Postdoctoral fellow at University of Seville, Department of Human Geography

Facultad de Geografía e Historia, C/ Doña María de Padilla, S/N, C.P: 41004 (Sevilla)

Jaime Jover

Postdoctoral fellow at University of Seville, Department of Human Geography

Overtourism, Place Alienation and the Right to the City:

Insights from the Historic Centre of Seville, Spain

Abstract. Increasing international travel flows across the planet have drawn attention to

socio-spatial justice concerning the impact of tourism and transnational gentrification in

cities. We suggest that the growth of tourists and lifestyle migrants can potentially

shrink or even deprive a social right to the city. The early work of philosopher and

sociologist Henri Lefebvre, particularly The Right to the City (1968), offer valuable

elements to understand the potential alienation of local residents from the city centre in

the context of a tourism-led urban economy. Several questions arise in this context that

are explored here: What injustices arise through the socio-spatial processes and

transformation of social spaces due to rapid tourism growth and overtourism? What

contribution does Lefebvre’s theoretical work make to current studies on overtourism

overall? We examine these questions through a case study in Seville, Andalusia (Spain).

It illustrates how its residents lose the right to everyday life in the historic centre and

become alienated from their local spaces. Mechanisms of commodification and

gentrification contribute to socio-spatial injustices and also make the city “inauthentic”

for visitors and residents. In this sense, the right to live and enjoy the city are lost to

both groups.

Keywords: right to the city, Lefebvre, socio-spatial justice, overtourism, place

alienation, gentrification.

Introduction: Socio-Spatial Justice in Times of Overtourism

Political and social concern over tourism has grown in many southern European cities in

the past few years, Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, Florence, Madrid, and Rome, among

others. Visitors have recently skyrocketed in these cultural tourism destinations triggering

problematic socio-spatial consequences and leading to the conceptualization of

“overtourism” in 2017 (see Peeters et al, 2018 for a brief overview of the origin of the

term). Academic attention to the topic has grown since, including literature reviews

(Capocchi et al., 2019 or Perkumiene and Pranskuniene, 2019) and special issues (Milano

et al., 2019). There is also growing political attention as the UN World Tourism

Organization and the European Parliament have expressed their concern with tourism

overcrowding (UNWTO, 2018; Peeters et al. 2018). Capocchi et. al. (2019) consider

overtourism with respect to the proliferation of “tourismphobia” in Spanish tourists’

destinations. Tourismphobia was first coined by Donaire in relation to Barcelona (2008)

and refers to local aversion and antagonism between residents and visitors, driven by

social concern and unrest due to tourism-related overcrowding and stress (see also

Delgado, 2008). Like touristification (Sequera and Nofre, 2018; Mansilla 2019; Jover and

Díaz-Parra, 2019), overtourism describes a range of social-political issues resulting from

mass tourism in urban cities. In European Mediterranean coastal destinations, for

instance, ecological groups and scholars have denounced extreme urbanization following

mass tourism and lifestyle migration (Fernández Durán, 2006; Naredo and Montiel, 2011;

Blázquez and Murray, 2010). The problem has been exacerbated by factors such as low-

cost airlines, cruise tourism and increasing short-term holiday rentals through the

proliferation of online booking platforms such as Airbnb (Veiga et al., 2018; Posma and

Schmuecker, 2017; Jover et. al., 2018). These have not only increased pressures on

mature destinations but also expansion into new places, including urban areas that were

neither designed for the activity in the first place nor probably prepared for it.

Overtourism is less about the number of tourists, and more about social injustices and

stress on the destination and its residents (Butler, 2018), and is related to very specific

socio-spatial and material processes, such as those of rising rents and displacement of

locals (Capocchi et al., 2019). It has been characterised more holistically as an “excessive

negative impact of tourism” (Capocchi et al, 2019, p. 2), influencing the “authenticity” of

cities and neighbourhoods, affecting tourist experience and local quality of life, causing

irritation and annoyance to residents (Goodwin, 2017, Milano et al. 2019). Among the

socio-spatial processes that contribute to social injustices such as described above is

gentrification, defined by Clark (2005: 25) as "a process involving a change in the

population of land-users such that the new users are of a higher socio-economic status

than the previous users, together with an associated change in the built environment

through a reinvestment" (cf. Beauregard, 1986). Most scholars associate gentrification

with different types of local population displacement, direct or indirect (Slater, 2009

following Marcuse, 1985) or even symbolic displacement (Janoschka and Sequera, 2016).

The literature on tourism and gentrification has also grown (see, for instance, “tourism

gentrification” by Gotham, 2005). Researchers have focused on gentrification and

tourism as related processes in current capitalist urbanization on a global scale, especially

studying historic centres in urban tourism destinations (García-Herrera, Smith and Mejías

Vera, 2013, Fuller and Michel, 2014, Cócola-Gant and Gago, 2019). Cócola-Gant (2018)

understands tourism as a gentrifying process causing different forms of displacement,

while Jover and Díaz-Parra (2019) deal with the articulation between gentrification

related to the replacement of locals by new better-off, usually middle-class incomers, and

their subsequent and overlapping replacement by temporary visitors. Debates also engage

with the tensions and opportunities afforded by amenity migration and lifestyle migrants,

regional or transnational newcomers arriving often with higher purchasing power (e.g.,

Singler and Wachsmuth, 2015; Zaban, 2019).

However, while gentrification and lifestyle migration has been garnering research

attention, a critical theoretical focus on social displacement and related social injustices

within tourism studies has been slow to take hold. For instance, the notion of alienation

has long been addressed by social theorists, who have moved the concept over time from

its Marxist origin in the sphere of production to social reproduction, mainly following the

work of French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) (see Silver,

2018). Relevant concepts include “land alienation,” related to of the loss of common or

private lands by indigenous or local people (see, for example, Van Noorlos, 2011; Burlo,

1989). “Place alienation” characterizes the feeling of displacement or inability to develop

a sense of belonging towards one’s current community (Relph, 1976; Hummon, 1992).

Gentrification, displacement and place alienation are intertwined socio-spatial processes

that contribute to social injustice. All these elements are well informed by Lefebvre’s

theoretical and empirical work on urban space. The opposition between appropriation and

place alienation as well as the relationship between resident displacement and tourist

pressure on historic centres were articulated in his seminal work The Right to the City

(Lefebvre, 1968). Yet little has been used of his immense oeuvre to address overtourism

in tourism studies. Lefebvre’s work offers a valuable opportunity to fill the current gap

in critical research on the impacts of urban tourism and overtourism. Several questions

arise in this context: What injustices arise through the socio-spatial processes and

transformation of social spaces due to rapid tourism growth and overtourism? Are ban

cultural tourism and the locals’ right to the city mutually exclusive? What roles do

Lefebvrian notions of appropriation and place alienation play in potential conflict that

arise in this context? What contribution does Lefebvre’s theoretical work make to current

studies on overtourism overall?

We explore these questions through a case study of a lesser-known destination, the

historic city of Seville, Spain. Research on overtourism has usually focused on large-scale

global and touristic cities such as Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona, Lisbon or

Venice (Milano et al, 2019 or Capocchi et al 2019). Far less attention has been paid to

second-tier cities like Seville in increasingly touristic regions within southern Europe. We

examine overtourism in Seville through empirical and theoretical study recovering the

work of one of the most relevant writers on space and the city, Henri Lefebvre. Our aim

is to confront the lack of critical and theoretical grounding of overtourism and examine

socio-spatial injustice throughout a Lefebvrian framework, specifically the opposition

between appropriation and alienation at the heart of Lefebvre’s work on the right to the

city.

The paper is organized as follows. We begin by discussing some key Lefebvrian

theoretical concepts and their association with the problem under scrutiny. An empirical

case study of Seville is then presented. Methodology includes both qualitative study

(interviews) as well as quantitative data gathering and analysis; for instance, exploring

datasets on urban tourism and population as well as analysing the City Council’s

specific urban renewal strategies oriented to attract tourism into the historic district.

Results and discussion follow, which involve stressing the main contradictions

generated by growing dependency on tourism growth, drawing on insights aided by

Lefebvrian concepts. The paper closes with a short conclusion.

Theoretical framework: Overtourism, Alienation and the Right to the City

City centres and overtourism in Lefebvre´s work

Lefebvre’s extensive work is omnipresent in liberal and radical approaches. Various

authors have pointed out a tendency towards institutionalization and political

moderation or reformism of his discourses by international organizations or frameworks

like the UN-Habitat, as well as a sort of overinflation in using notions such as the right

to the city (Merrifield, 2006; Purcell, 2013; see also https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/un-and-

the-rule-of-law/united-nations-human-settlements-programme/). However, Lefebvre remains

the main critical (Marxist) philosopher whose writings on space are still indispensable

in the analysis of urban processes. Among the wide range of topics Lefebvre reflected

upon are historic cities and the effects of cultural tourism, which he addressed in

relation to Mediterranean Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece and southern France).

Centrality is a key notion in studying these urban areas. The city is a concentration of

resources, objective and symbolic, and cannot survive without a centre. On the one

hand, historic city centres account for the historical process of urbanization,

representing the deep transformation of the pre-modern and pre-capitalist city. On the

other hand, they encompass an area where contradictions of modern urbanism emerge:

exclusion, museumification and commodification. For Lefebvre, the western pre-

capitalist city is mainly a concentration of use value and refers to the city as an oeuvre

(broadly translated as “work” from French), where inhabitants produce and consciously

shape their human space. The concentration of symbols and meanings associated with

the monumentality of the built environment also plays a key role; Lefebvre states that

the urban society is only conceivable with monuments, i.e., with a transfunctional and a

transcultural city centre (Lefebvre, 1970, p. 103). He addresses the role of the urban and

historical centre in works like The Right to the City (1968), Space and Politics (1972)

and The Production of Space (1974). As he explains in the former, ‘an urban reality

cannot be forged […] without the existence of a centre: without the ensemble of

everything that is born and produced in space’ (1972, p. 19). The city centre is a social

and functional non-segregated space, allowing the greater virtue of the city: the

possibility of encounters and the play of “difference” in local spaces, the way in which

interaction and encounters of everyday life constructed sense of place and meaning.

While power relations are dominant, for instance, he emphasizes the capacity of

monuments to signify authority, he still recognized this latter meaning-making virtue of

social spaces in the city centre: “who says ‘monument’ says oppression and domination,

thus power, but also splendour and meaning” (1978, p. 264).

Cities existed before industrial capitalism, but this form of capitalism destroys them,

argued Lefebvre. Use values are subordinated to exchange values through the institution

of private property and the land market, inevitably entailing collective expropriation.

These processes are so intense that they tend to destroy the city centre’s use value. Here

Lefebvre is describing the physical and symbolic decline of western city centres during

the 20th century: depopulation, ruination or the emergence of slums, while land rents

kept their potential value high (Smith, 1996). Most people abandoned the city centres

and headed to new peripheral quarters, and subsequently a new polycentric and

segregated urban space was produced. The city as an industrial product and a

commodity substituted the urban space as an oeuvre (Lefebvre, 1968, 1970).

As value itself cannot exist without use value, the city centres had to house new

functions: financial, commercial or touristic. The latter directed Lefebvre’s attention

towards cases in Mediterranean historic urban areas, which were being transformed into

“a commodity for high standard consumption for foreigners, tourists, and suburban

visitors. It survives thanks to this double function: place consumption and consumption

of the place” (Lefebvre, 1968, pp. 27-28). Explaining further, Lefebvre (1971, p. 192)

states that “tourists make the authenticity they seek in the historic city disappear.

Venice, with 200,000 tourists, is not Venice anymore. The object vanishes with the

activity by which it is used […] tourists become their own spectacle.” Discussing how

tourists want to experience an elitist life in underdeveloped regions, and again referring

to Mediterranean historic cities, he states: “Mass movement of tourist hordes escaping

towards urban (Venice, Florence) or rural spaces, where their arrival is equal to its

destruction, is one of the greatest spatial contradictions of modernity” (Lefebvre, 1974,

p. 176).

Lefebvre mentions examples in Spain and Greece too. He links urban tourism with

some kind of “urban neo-colonization” (Lefebvre, 1976, pp. 61 and 129). In southern

European regions, lack of industrialization is substituted by the development of a non-

productive circuit of accumulation sustained by tourism and urbanization. Lefebvre

illustrated how overproduction in industrialized (northern European) countries threatens

the functioning of capitalist economies and creates surplus capital flows to the non-

productive circuit in southern Europe. Financial centres in the north control the fluxes

of capital and tourists, generating a relation of subordination and dependency (Ibíd).

The secondary circuit of accumulation that he traced was systematically theorized by

David Harvey (1982, 2004). For Lefebvre (1968, 1972), this model creates an apparent

wealth that conceals the underdevelopment which emerges during crisis periods.

Alienation, appropriation and the right to the city

Key to this theoretical development is how the processes described articulate with

another Lefebvrian fundamental notion: alienation. Here Lefebvre departs from the

Marxist notion of alienation that focuses on the production process, and how the object

created is alien to the subject who produces it. In Marxist theory, this has been granted

as a psychological attitude of workers towards the product of their labour and their

productive activity, but it also has an objective content in the material pauperization of

the working classes (Sanchez Vazquez, 2013, pp. 503-504). Lefebvre moves this

alienation from the production of things to the production of space and social relations

in capitalist systems. If private property ownership of means of production alienates the

(waged) labour from its output, the private property ownership of urban land alienates

inhabitants from the city, both subjectively and objectively. As Purcell (2013, p. 149)

points out, Lefebvre understands the right to the city as a struggle to de-alienate urban

space through the process of appropriation. Appropriation also entails making an

oeuvre, i.e., inhabitants create and consciously transform the city, shaping and

transmitting their own personality to it (Lefebvre, 1971). This oeuvre is the pre-

capitalist city of unproductive consumption, characterized by the concentration of use

value. However, the expansion of capitalist institutions, i.e., capitalist state, private

property and the land market, dismantle this form of the city. The commodified product

substitutes the oeuvre, the habitat does the same with inhabitancy, and alienation is

imposed at the expense of appropriation (Lefebvre, 1968, p. 20). In this scenario,

residents become alien to the city that they produce and transform, being at the same

time objectively displaced from the oeuvre space par excellence: the historic city centre.

The historical process of commodification, displacement and gentrification of historic

city centres is at the origin of modern place alienation. Lefebvre (1968) refers to

Haussmann’s Paris reforms (major public works project he undertook as Prefect of the

Seine in the mid-1800s for Napolean III) as a violent eviction of the working classes

from the inner city towards new peripheral neighbourhoods, as architecture design and

planning configure a consumerist and alienated urban life (Lefebvre, 1972, p. 167; see

also Harvey, 2003). In the new proletarian urban suburbs, Lefebvre (1968) identifies a

similar double strategy of uprooting and disorganizing workers through the organization

of social reproduction and continued inequities and alienation. He therefore posits a

special meaning on the right to the city as the right of the working classes to return to

the city centre—it is a right of reappropriation. Lefebvre also notices a resettlement

process in 1970s Paris on previously abandoned historic quarters. New residents were

middle-class professionals escaping from conservative and oppressive bourgeois

suburbs with financial power to afford restoring run-down buildings, turning slums in

inner Paris into picturesque quarters (Lefebvre, 1970, pp. 153-154). This movement

towards the centre does not imply its collective appropriation; rather it describes further

commodification and expansion of segregated habitats. The city centre’s transformation

into a place for middle-class hedonistic consumption and a touristic resource is the

result of the commodification that drives a process of place alienation over time.

The notion of authenticity can be seen as complementary to Lefebvrian alienation in

historic centres as the result of a historical process of capitalist modernization and

commodification. Lefebvre did not give an explicit definition of authenticity in his work

and only commented on it briefly. However, his use of the term is coherent with the

notion of place authenticity used by humanistic and existentialist geographers, where

discussion on place and placelessness relates authenticity closely to place alienation or

place belonging. For instance, Relph (1977) describes the experience of place

authenticity related to collective belonging stemming from collective identity and

rooting. Sanguin (1981) describes inauthenticity as the result of the production of places

for mass consumption, creating place alienation. Sociologists of tourism like Wang

(1999) refer to notions of “existential authenticity”, non-related to the authenticity of an

object but to how people experience authenticity or loss of authenticity–in tourism

activities as well as in daily life. It should be noted here that critics like Laguna (2006)

state that authenticity is a modernist value in decay due to mass media and post-modern

thought (see also Harvey, 1990). However, the consumption of authenticity is still a

strong motivation to travel and continues to have a relevant role for urban tourism, such

as in the renewal or revitalization of historic neighbourhoods as “authentic” spaces for

tourist consumption (see Fuller and Michel, 2014; Flores and Ramos, 2017).

Going back to Lefebvre, it can be argued that the experience of inauthenticity either by

residents or by visitors is a key result of place alienation due to the process of

commodification of space. Such a place-based notion of authenticity involves the ideas

of community and neighbourhood. According to Lefebvre, every community is

grounded in some kind of collective property; urban communities as being discussed

here depend on the collective appropriation of parts of their city by residents. A

neighbourhood (barrio) is a specific community of residents appropriating a specific

portion of urban space. Lefebvre describes neighbourhoods (barrios) as empirical units

—more circumstantial than structural— that are necessary for the city’s existence.

Cities do not exist without the process of community appropriation, i.e., without

neighbourhoods there is just urban space (Lefebvre, 1971), whereas these communities

are the basis of lived experience and a rich authenticity of everyday life. To summarize,

then, the Lefebvrian right to the city must be seen as a right of its residents to a non-

alienated urban life and to collective appropriation by the locals that inevitably entails

community and neighbourhood development, yielding authentic experiences for its

inhabitants. The case study in Seville, Spain, below illustrates well Lefebvrian

processes of place alienation, appropriation, and discourses of authenticity, and raise the

critical question of the right to the city in the context of overtourism and gentrification.

Case Study: Seville, Spain

Seville was a relevant centre of economic and political power during the Roman

Empire’s domination of the Iberian Peninsula as well as in the Islamic expansion during

the Middle Ages. After the Christian conquest and the beginning of the colonization of

America by the Spanish Empire, the city became one of the main commercial harbours

in Western Europe. But by 1800 Seville had turned into an economic and demographic

stagnated city, the capital of an agrarian and severe underdeveloped region. This

situation extends along most of the 19th and 20th century when southern Spain remained

disconnected from the European industrialization processes (Arenas Posadas, 2015).

However, Seville succeeded in preserving a wide range of built heritage from different

historical periods - it has one of the largest medieval city centres in Western Europe,

partially still bound by its 12th-century Muslim walls. The UNESCO World Heritage

Site declared in 1987 includes The Royal Palace, mixing Muslim and Catholic

architecture, the Cathedral, built over the previous mosque but conserving its minaret

and the ablution courtyard, and the Archive of Indies which contains the main archives

on the process of colonization of America (see figure 1). The tourist economy became

highly significant as the 20th Century drew to a close and, in the aftermath of the 2008

economic crisis, tourism specialization grew even faster, so today Seville has turned in a

fashionable destination. For the past three years, the city has broken the records in

numbers of tourists, up to more than 3 million visitors in 2018 (see

https://sevilla.abc.es/sevilla/sevi-nuevo-record-para-turismo-sevilla-supera-barrera-3-

millones-visitantes-2018-201901312016_noticia.html). A detailed picture of the urban

development and tourism-related transformations of Seville emerges in the research

study undertaken below.

Research approach and methods

Within gentrification studies, finding reliable data on displacement tends to be a

common obstacle. The same applies here; neither in Seville nor in Spain do we have

statistics offering a clear picture of population displacement from the historic centre.

This is due to the complex multidimensionality of the gentrification process as well as

lack of attention of the state institutions to documenting the transformations and

population flows. Our research of overtourism and gentrification in Seville examines its

transformation not only with respect to physical displacement, but also in relation to its

symbolic dimensions and intersections with tourism. As such, a mixed methods

approach seemed appropriate, with quantitative data gathering to complement the

qualitative study undertaken here.

We contextualize the case study with socio-demographic data coupled with secondary

sources and information from Seville City Council’s public urban and tourism policy

documents. Quantitative data is provided by the municipal population census, consisting

of basic demographic statistics disaggregated over time. Secondary sources include

publicly available socio-demographic datasets provided by the Spanish Statistics Office,

which have already been used in previous research to test gentrification in Seville

historic centre. The qualitative part of the study is based exclusively on in-depth

interviews with residents in Seville. Interviews are used to identify what

transformations are being perceived by inhabitants (if any) and how they are responding

to changes, conflicts and contradictions regarding tourism specialization in Seville’s

city centre. We conducted five interviews with key informants (three of them current

residents of the historic city centre): three planners working in the City Council’s

Urbanism Department and two social activists linked to the right to housing and anti-

evictions movements. In addition, we interviewed participants belonging to households

established in the last twenty years in the historic city centre. We explored here the

differences between those who remain living in the area and those who moved out. We

were also interested in differentiating between local residents, Spanish non-Sevillians

and foreigners (potentially transnational gentrifiers) who settled in Seville. Most new

incomers had first contact with the city as temporary visitors or tourists, so their

perceptions of transformations around the historic centre since their first visit provided

valuable insights. We conducted snowball sampling, looking for an equilibrium

between displaced and non-displaced households, locals and foreigners. In total, we

interviewed ten current residents and seven former residents of the historic district:

Sevillian born (7), Spanish non-Sevillian (4) and foreigners (6) living in the city

permanently. All foreigners are from Western Europe except for one Argentinian, who

was among the group of former residents displaced (since 2014) from the city centre to

which they had generally moved between the 1990s and the 2000s. The age range of

participants was between 32 and 66. Family types include couples with children,

childless couples, flat-mates without familiar bonds, three people living alone and one

single mother. Most of them were skilled professionals, while four worked on unskilled

jobs linked to the tourist sector in the city centre (only one participant had retired). We

use pseudonyms for the participant described in Table 1.

Table 1. Table of participants.

Status Nationality Pseudonym Profession Age Household

size

Former

residents

Spanish

(Seville)

Ana Architect 40 2

Spanish

(Madrid)

Jacinta Waitress 36 3

Spanish

(Madrid)

Monica Psychologist 38 2

Spanish

(Seville)

Mercedes Artisan 43 4

French

Angie Translator 43 1

Italian

Sara Photographer 38 2

Argentinian

Natividad Carpenter 41 2

Current

residents

Spanish

(Seville)

María Secondary

school teacher

49 4

Spanish

(Seville)

José Lawyer 65 2

Spanish

(Cordoba)

David Architect 50 1

Spanish

(Seville)

Pepa Geographer 55 2

Spanish

(Seville)

Manuel Anthropologist,

scholar

40 2

Spanish

(Cadiz)

Juan Civil servant 36 1

Spanish

(Seville)

Silvia Waitress 32 2

Dutch

Peter Retiree 66 1

German Karl Language

teacher

57 2

Italian Caroline Hotel

receptionist

32 1

Interview questions revolved around the participant’s residential history and their

spatial behaviours. We asked about their perception of the historic centre as well as their

experiences of land use and built environment transformations, especially in relation to

the intensification of tourists flows over the last decade and impacts on their daily

spatial behaviours (paths to work, leisure, shopping), as well as relocation from the city

centre (in the case of those displaced). Descriptive theme-based analysis of their

response produced key themes around their perception of transformations of the historic

centre (also related to authenticity or loss thereof), sense of belonging to their current or

previous neighbourhood and their awareness of being physically or symbolically

displaced by tourism.

Evolution and Transformations of the Historic City Centre of Seville

Seville’s growth has oscillated between long periods of urban stagnation or uncontrolled

expansion and two periods of planned restructuring, coinciding with international mega-

events in 1929 and 1992 respectively, oriented to the attraction of public and private

investment for tourism and commercial purposes.

Firstly, the 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition was used to create Seville’s city-brand and

to lay grounds for future tourist exploitation. It was the first well-planned urban

enlargement, characterized by the construction of high-quality hotels and the

reinvention of tourist attractions across and beyond the southern city centre (Díaz-Parra,

2016; Martín, 2009). The key operations took place in the surroundings of the current

UNESCO World Heritage Site. Secondly, soon thereafter there was a long period of

stagnation coinciding with the fascist coup d’état, the Civil War and the dictatorship.

During the 20th century, Seville’s historic city centre became polarized between a

commercial and increasingly touristic south side that was sparsely populated by

residents historically linked to the local high-class, and an overpopulated north side that

had been downgraded for decades (González, 1975). The city centre was largely

abandoned during the Franco´s dictatorship, where the urban focus then was on

suburban expansion. Urban planning, especially in the historic district’s north side,

restructured medieval urban patterns to allow traffic and modern block of flats (Ruiz,

2005; Marín, 1980). As Spain transitioned to a democracy and progressive politicians

took over the City Council, the 1980s saw a brake on large transformations and the start

of a period of micro-scale interventions on the historic district. The city has stopped

growing, and remains stable with around 700,000 inhabitants since the 1990s.

Shortly after these new ideas flowed into the City Council, a second moment of large-

scale urban transformation occurred. The 1992 Universal Exposition meant urban

restructuring ranging from the development of transport infrastructures –including

improving accessibility to the historic city centre– to fostering urban renewal across

previously downgraded quarters (Fernández Salinas, 1993). The 1987 Seville Master

Plan gave legal support to the Exposition, pointing out some key issues in the historic

centre such as the loss of historical buildings, attrition of residents, population aging and

slums (Gerencia de Urbanismo, 1987, p.135). Editorials and opinion pieces complaining

about the negative, downgraded image of parts of the city centre as well as need for

security of tourists became commonplace pro-gentrification discourses by local

intellectuals (León Vela, 2000). Urban planning discourses were also key in justifying

neoliberal restructuring and the city centre’s upgrade and rejuvenation around 1992.

These policies blamed previous developmentalism plans for population decline due to

displacement of low-income inhabitants (Seville Historic City Centre Conservation

Plan, 1995), but at the same time implemented renewal strategies that brought about real

estate speculation and attracted gentrifiers that continued the trend of displacing rooted

communities and neighborhoods in the 1990s and further (García, 1998; Díaz-Parra,

2014).

Urban renewal in the historic city centres northern quarters was possible thanks to the

Urban European Initiative (Ibidem). Although European funds were initially aimed at

social intervention, most of the investment was spent on repairing and rehabilitating

various buildings and improving public infrastructure. This was accompanied by a

strong campaign of security that included the eviction of squatted buildings, elimination

of drug dealing hotspots and reduction of prostitution (Díaz-Parra, 2014). Private capital

profited from the surplus created by these public interventions, restoring housing for

new affluent residents. In a few years, the social character of the whole historic centre

area had changed extensively, slums disappeared and many middle-class households

substituted marginalized low-income groups who continued to be displaced to

peripheral neighbourhoods. After further interventions at the beginning of the 21st

century, tourist circuits expanded, the Alameda de Hercules being a special case of this

as chic restaurants and night pubs and clubs filled previously the side-lined area (Díaz-

Parra and Jover, 2018).

Figure 1. Seville’s historic district: quarters and milestones.

Source: authors.

Prior to the 2008 crisis, urban strategies also fostered two flagship projects in and

around the historic district to attract visitors. The Metropol Parasol was a €120 million

Council-financed project developed between 2006 and 2011 at the historic district’s

geographical heart. The idea was to restore an old marketplace by adding diverse

facilities, new commercial spaces, an archaeological museum and a viewing platform.

Between 2007 and 2015 the Council allowed the development of Torre Cajasol, the

city’s first skyscraper that also comprised a large commercial space in the vicinity of the

historic centre (Figure 1). The regional government of Andalusia then listed the south-

eastern commercial cluster of Seville’s historic district as a Touristic Area in 2014.

Businesses have since been free to choose their opening hours during periods of

intensive tourist inflow and funding is available to modernize and revitalize the urban

milieu. This has led to the loss of long-standing retail shops and the gourmetization of

traditional markets in the area (Arenal, Encarnación and Feria), yet another step towards

the commodification of urban space (Jover, 2019). Pubs and restaurants have

mushroomed at a pace of 76% and small hotels at 36% between 2014 and 2017, while

employment in such establishments has risen to make up 25% of total jobs in Seville

(almost half of this 25% is located in the city centre). The City Council’s goal is to

expand the Touristic Area within and towards new areas (Ayuntamiento de Sevilla,

2018). The rapid increase of tourist flows goes hand-in-hand with the development of

new tourist accommodation. Seville ranks fourth in terms of short-term holiday rentals

in Spain, but is the second (only after Madrid) with respect to the percent of tourist

accommodation compared to the total conventional dwelling in its historic centre. This

type of lodging has not stopped growing since 2013 onwards, and in 2019 comprises up

to 12,6% of the whole housing stock in the historic centre of Seville (data retrieved

from http://datahippo.org). The increase coincides with a new U-turn in demographic

tendencies. Between 2001 and 2014, Seville’s historic centre increased to 6,000

inhabitants, but since 2014 it has lost more than 3,500 people, while aging resident

increased in the historic core as most of them are landowners and cannot be easily

displaced (see Figure 2)

Figure 2. Seville’s historic district: population and aging.

Source: Municipal population census.

Appropriation, Displacement and Place Alienation in Seville

Appropriation

Despite the diverse origin of the participants, their reasons to settle in the city centre do

not differ in general terms. Sevillian-born residents came mainly from middle-class

neighbourhoods and moved into the centre with friends when they became self-

sufficient and independent. The non-Sevillian born residents, both Spanish and

foreigners, moved mostly directly to the centre when they first arrived in Seville. The

main motivation for all participants to settle in the historic core was a previous network

of friends. Many highlight a milieu of young people with multiple informal meeting

points in squares, pubs and cultural or social venues. Based on their points of view,

appropriation is related to the existence of a certain community and a strong feeling of

belonging to (and identification with). a place. For example, when talking about

Alameda, Natividad states: “the square was ours […] to have a barrio, to control the

space, made me feel good”. This idea of a barrio also emerges in former residents’

interviews when discussing which neighbourhood they chose to live in. For example

Monica thought she would be “isolated” in a peripheral city neighbourhood. Sara had to

move to the suburbs after 10 years of living in the city centre because the rising rents,

making her feeling “lost and isolated.” Most participants refer to the concept of barrio

as attractive because it is “familiar”, meaning that they would frequently come across

people they are acquainted with on their streets and in the squares. This sense of

familiarity and comfort is something that all participants realise has recently changed:

they no longer know most of their neighbours and local shop owners. All former

residents and some of the current ones who entered the area in the 1990s (Antonia,

Silvia, Karl and Caroline) have particularly stressed they have noticed these

transformations.

The barrio character ultimately refers to the use value of social relations. Lefebvre

identified traditional festivities as the best example of this un-productive appropriation

of space. Paradoxically, some of the foreign participants feel the opposite way. Peter,

who bought a house in the historic city a few years ago, thinks that his quarter is very

“authentic”, not destroyed by tourism or “not too much”, but then he recognises he still

considers himself a tourist who is “accepted” on the streets. However, he adds: “I feel

less integrated during the festivities… on a daily basis, when people work or go to the

mall, I feel part of society, but when festivities arrive, I don’t understand anything”. By

contrast, José talks about how the working classes that used to inhabit the city centre

only come back to their former neighbourhoods when festivities such as the Holy Week

take place.

There is also some degree of fetishization about the historical milieu and its aesthetics

by non-Sevillian residents, both Spanish and foreigners. Monica speaks about residing

in the city centre as living “in a fairy-tale, in a special place, as if it were a permanent

holiday”, a shared perception with Caroline. Authenticity of space appears throughout

most interviews, especially in the cases of foreigners. Karl talks about defining the city

and its historic quarters as containers of “love, enchantment, magic, fantasy”, referring

also to the local’s culture of “marginality, freedom or rebellion” as very attractive. In

Marx’s Capital, fetishization is essentially part of the process of transforming use values

into commodities, and it is part of the alienation of the objects from the producers and

the social relations that create them (see Sanchez Vazquez, 2013). Consumers of the

urban space describe the city centre as a “magical” place that seems to be independent

or far away from the social processes going on (speculation, displacement) and from the

role of visitors and inhabitants as consumers creating and transforming this space. In

other words, the historical space in its current configuration appears to be perceived as

outside of the social relations that are currently transforming them and that have

historically shaped it—this is a fundamental part of the successful creation of a spatial

commodity and the place alienation.

Displacement and place alienation

Just as alienation in Marxist terms is an objective process constituted by the exploitation

of workers and separating from the means of production, place alienation can be

described as an objective and physical process of displacement and/or deprivation from

the city centre by those who have traditionally inhabited it. Former city centre residents

interviewed offered key insights here. This group embodies middle-class households

displaced towards neighbourhoods outside the city centre, and their movement is readily

visible in the local demographic statistics, as the historic district has been losing young

and adult households over the past five years. It is meaningful that these residents are

moving to a place as close to the city centre as possible, because they wanted to keep

living in the area. There is generally a feeling of forced displacement in all participants

we interviewed, it is not exclusive to Spanish respondents. Sara and Caroline, both

Italians, shared the same emotion once their landlords put an end to their long-term

tenancy contracts to turn the flats into short-term vacation rentals. Sara states that

evictions are currently widespread, and speaks of an “invisibilization”. In Caroline’s

case, she had to move a few times within the city centre in the past three years,

something that happened to her current boyfriend too. Abrupt termination of rent

contracts has become commonplace as landlords decide to sell their properties to real

estate businesses or to reform them to rent in the touristic short-term market. Other

former residents have moved out of the centre because of rising rents and prices. For

instance, Monica comments: “A lot of people who used to live around Alameda or San

Luis are now moving here (towards a neighbourhood just outside the historic district).

We are coming here not because we want to, but because we can’t afford the cost of

living in the city centre”.

Long-term current residents such as Antonia or Juan who moved to the area at the

beginning of the 1990s and bought relatively cheap properties, speak about how back

then they witnessed policemen evicting entire buildings inhabited by low-income

tenants or squatters. Moreover, the social activists interviewed (José and David),

confirm a general displacement of poorer households in parallel to the area’s renewal.

Pepa, who worked on developing the EU Urban Plan between 1994 and 1999, recalls

that the concentration of investment in a short period of time within the limited historic

centre space brought about a first wave of speculation that displaced low-income

families. As Ana explains, there are at least two differentiated processes of

displacement: a classic gentrification process between the 1990s and the beginning of

21st century, and a more recent displacement of residents of diverse social backgrounds

due to tourism pressures.

Alienation can also be viewed in subjective terms here. Former residents view the

transformations of the city centre quite negatively (such perceptions are less evident in

current residents’ responses, especially those who have not been living in the area for a

long time). Many older shops and businesses, especially pubs –very relevant in Seville’s

street culture–are perceived to have disappeared; some notice shops and pubs rapidly

shifting from one year to another, and popular places where some participants used to

hang out have shut down. Ana mentions that is no longer common to know the shop

owner, who used to live in the same neighbourhood, nor the employees. There is also a

perception of overcrowding in pubs which are targeting a different, higher-end

consumer as prices have soared. Some participants talk about a sort of elitization in the

retail fabric, on par with the disappearance of small and traditional establishments such

as groceries or fisheries (Monica), while some remaining enterprises–for instance the

revitalized Feria market–have become unaffordable (Angie or Ana). Antonia and Silvia

regret the proliferation of modern aesthetics and different business models in the area,

especially franchises, which are completely alien to the local culture.

Due to these transformations, participants experience a loss of familiarity with the

neighbourhood, a sort of ‘nobody knows anybody’ feeling, to the extent that some do

not wish to remain because there is no barrio anymore (Natividad). They are feeling the

pressure of displacement as Marcuse (1985) would describe it. Sara and Angie left

Spain for economic reasons during the 2008 economic crisis, and when they decided to

come back, they chose not to live in the city centre again because the barrio that they

knew had disappeared. Some foreign respondents currently living in the city recognize a

similar loss of neighbourhood “authenticity” (Karl) and say “there is no barrio life

anymore in the city centre” (Caroline). Likewise, Jacinta observes a depersonalization

of the historic centre, driven by tourism and rising costs which only the elderly can

sustain if they own their own homes:

“Every six months it changes, businesses and people. It is difficult to create

networks because there are many new people and many others are forced out

because of rising rents. Tourism conditions all and nothing is defined. In five

years, we have seen how a whole street was transformed, and only elderly

people remain because they own their homes”

Perceptions of (over)tourism

Are these consequences on Seville’s city centre strictly related to tourism? Ana and Sara

think that the overcrowding of pubs and people in and around Alameda responds in part

to tourism and partially to locals from other Sevillian neighbourhoods. Following

Lefebvre, there should be a contradiction between collective appropriation of space –a

community deeply rooted in a historical barrio, for instance–and the more recent access

to the historic centre as a commodified place to visit and consume. Indeed, a few

Spanish former residents like Mercedes and foreign current residents like Karl and

Caroline avoiding touristic areas, and confess they only walk there at night when there

are fewer tourists. In the tourism cluster in the southeast, there are queues to access the

main monuments and it is increasingly difficult to walk through the busiest public

spaces.

Respondents noticed, too, that tourism has spread across the whole city centre. Some

were surprised when in the past few years they began to see groups of visitors in places

that not so long ago would have been completely unnatural for them to be in (such as

San Luis or the Feria market), or in places stigmatized as dangerous for outsiders (e.g.,

Pumarejo square and surroundings). The arrival of tourists has become a reason for

residents to stop going to certain places. For example, Angie describes how she has

been “scammed” in a pub in the city centre where she used to hang out because she is

French, and the bartender thought she was a tourist. Mercedes thinks the transformation

of the Feria market for tourism purposes has destroyed many traditional grocers, so she

refuses to go shopping there anymore. She adds a spatial reflection: “before tourists

were confined to hotels, but now they’re all over the city centre.” Similarly, Monica

confesses that she hadn’t usually noticed tourism because visitors did not go into

residential areas as they do now. Ana and Jacinta no longer step foot in Alameda

because it is overcrowded. Interestingly, other current residents, especially recent

foreigners (Peter and Caroline) think these areas are still not excessively transformed by

tourism.

It is worth mentioning that no participant blames tourism itself. Ana criticizes an

excessive tourism specialization in certain areas, while Monica or Mercedes blame

speculation and more specifically those doing business with tourists at the expense of

residents. Others try to adapt to changes. Sara feels tourism took her space, but she

makes the best of it and has thought about offering an alternative tour as part of her

Airbnb offering, focused on contested memory and the story of social struggle in some

inner-city quarters. This way, even a city walk becomes part of re-appropriating the city

and countering the exacerbation of urban commodification by the digital economy’s

multinational companies.

Discussion

Examples abound in the literature about how investments in historic centres and urban

tourism-led economies have turned deteriorating neighbourhoods into attractive places

for local and foreign middle-class residents and visitors (see Cocola-Gant, 2018) city

centre revitalization can also bring in more affluent consumers as the case of Seville

illustrates. Herein lies the main contradiction that Lefebvre (and Harvey later) unveiled

about tourism-oriented urban economies: successful commodification of the urban

space destroys some of the elements (appropriation, community, authenticity) that

initially attracted new residents and visitors. Both Spanish and foreign residents in

Seville experience a chain of social injustices associated with the process, including

physical household displacement driven by rising rents, as well as subjective alienation

from their current or former neighbourhoods. Lefebvre’s notion of alienation offers a

critical way to understand overtourism’s negative impact on everyday life and resident

and community displacement due to gentrification and touristification. The never-

ending transformation of urban space that is required for capital expansion translates

into a non-appropriable place. Community building and meaning making become

increasingly harder when public spaces and the built environment are constantly being

commodified for capital gain.

The case also shows that place alienation and place authenticity are useful notions to

consider jointly. Local and foreign residents’ claims about the city centre becoming

progressively inauthentic refer to the loss of neighbourhoods (barrios) and community,

increasing lack of identification and familiarity with place as new faces and new

businesses uproot traditional cultural institutions. As gentrification and increasing

tourism turn historic districts into commodified and standardized places, they come to be

non-appropriable and perceived as inauthentic by residents and visitors alike. Even

though Lefebvre did not pay much attention to authenticity when dealing with place

alienation, these ideas taken together cast a critical light on overtourism. The loss of

authenticity and community can be interpreted from a Marxist-Lefebvrian perspective as

part of place fetishization and commodification as described by Sanchez-Vázquez (2013).

Authenticity–or its appearance–can be manipulated to stimulate desire for consuming

commodities, just as the experience or perception of authenticity (or loss thereof) can

influence residents’ capacity to appropriate space and neighbourhood. These notions can

and should be integrated into a theoretical framework on place alienation and

appropriation.

Seville’s case also offers evidence that overtourism and gentrification can partially

overlap, showing complementarity and paving the way to the historic centre’s

standardization. They share a common pattern: the commodification of space. Both

processes are two sides of the same coin, working together to a certain extent,

something that has already been pointed out (Sequera and Nofre, 2018; Jover and Díaz-

Parra, 2019 …). When the city centre becomes a highly demanded commodity, market

mechanisms begin to work and determine who has access to it and, more importantly,

influence who owns it (and therefore makes a profit out of it), and who has the “right”

to enter or leave. Displacement and segregation are some of the consequences since in

the case study. However, at least in Seville’s case, whereas early gentrification

increased resident inflows and helped to rejuvenate the historic centre, current perceived

overtourism is associated with depopulation (since 2013) and displacement of middle-

class households because of the rising rents or the impossibility of buying a house.

Scholars of overtourism have also drawn attention to severe frictions between the right

to tourism and the right to the city. Excessive tourism, linked to specific and material

factors such as rising rents, denies the right to housing and to the historic centre for a

variety of community residents. The case shows how the commodification of historic

neighbourhoods not only displaces poorer households but also part of the middle-classes

–especially renters–that moved into the historic centre over the last twenty years.

Sevillian born residents that enjoy a special identity bond with the historic centre are

uprooted, while displacement also spreads across non-Sevillians that were first attracted

to live in the same area. Urban identity exists and the place is experienced as authentic

because there is a neighbourhood community that uses and gives meaning to the area on

a daily basis, i.e., that appropriate space. Communities are not structural to the city, but

they need some stability, otherwise, they become an illusion, which is precisely what

happens when the barrio turns un-appropriable due to growing commodification and

commercialization: communities stop existing. In Lefebvrian terms, there is a conflict

between collective appropriations and consuming urban space: a contradiction between

the tourist hopes and desires, the sector’s economic interests and the effects of both of

these on places and their residents.

Conclusions

Lefebvre’s theoretical framework on the right to the city offers a valuable critical

approach to examine the emerging research on overtourism and gentrification. It

enrichens conceptual building by linking tourism overcrowding to place alienation and

unjust socio-spatial processes such as displacement or loss of neighbourhood (barrio),

community and authenticity In Lefebvrian terms, the right to the city can be understood

as a right to a non-alienated existence through urban appropriation that enables everyday

life and dwelling in communities and neighborhoods (barrios). Yet appropriation is not a

narrow concept. As the case study on Seville shows, it seems to be compatible with certain

degrees of cultural tourism and is even a source of authenticity that attracts visitors and

new residents. However, as economic commodification and tourist specialization

accelerate, this appropriation becomes threatened and place alienation intensifies. The

conceptualization of place alienation as discussed in this study is key to linking

overtourism’s consequences with socio-spatial justice and generalized processes of

commodification in capitalist global metropolises.

Our current work has focused primarily on Lefebvre’s early works on urbanization,

particularly The Right to The City (1968). The Urban Revolution (1970) is also highly

recommended to interested readers. Lefebvre developed his interest in ideology and

alienation theories in these early works, building drawing on prior philosophical works.

Rereading and reformulating Lefebvrian notions of alienation and appropriation today

are essential to investigate current struggles over the right to the city in overtouristic

urban destinies, and can help to open new urban political agendas and influence future

research on tourism development and social contestation. If place alienation is part of a

general process resulting from the commodification of social relations, to what extent is

overtourism a paradigmatic and leading process of current capitalist commodification?

Similarly, where could this process lead us in regards to spatial commodification

processes going on in current global capitalism?

Instead of coupling the right to the city with a supposed right to tourism, we should

perhaps advocate for a right to a non-alienated appropriation of historic centres for

everyone, because they are key elements in identity production, generating a sense of

belonging and rootedness in place. These lines of thought bring about more questions:

Who really has the right to the city in a globalized world of mobilities? If we assume

that communities are unavoidably created, dissolved and recreated, how are we to

guarantee free access to historic urban centres without adversely impacting existing

local communities? How can we ensure fair creation and re-creation of communities in

spaces that are in high demanded by residents and visitors? What kind of policies are

necessary to facilitate just (fair) access to diverse groups of residents and also conserve

the monuments and other cultural heritage that constitute past, present and future of the

historic city? And, most importantly, is it possible to manage what appear to be

conflicting rights and divergent perceptions of tourism stress and place “authenticity”

within the current context of capitalist space commodification?

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