Overtourism, place alienation and the right to the city: insights from the historic centre of Seville, Spain

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) ibandi[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 lowcost 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 precapitalist 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 nonproductive 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 nonproductive 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 precapitalist 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- 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 selfsufficient 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 neverending 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 middleclass 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? References Arenas Posadas, C. (2015). Poder y economía en el sur. Seville: Fundación Centro de Estudios Andaluces. Ayuntamiento de Sevilla, (2018). Impacto ZGAT Sevilla 2014-2017. Seville: Ayuntamiento de Sevilla. Beauregard, R. A. (1986). The Chaos and Complexity of Gentrification. In N. Smith and P. Williams Gentrification of the City. New York: Routledge. Blázquez, M. & Murray, I. (2010). Una geohistoria de la turistizacion de las islas Baleares. Periplo Sustentable, 18, 69-118. Burlo, C. (1989). Land Alienation, Land Tenure and Tourism in Vanuatu, a Melanesian Island Nation. GeoJournal 19(3), 317- 321 Butler, R.W. (2018). Challenges and opportunities. Worldw. Hosp. Tour. Themes 10, 635–641. Capocchi, A., Vallone, C., Pierotti, M. and Amaduzzi, A. (2019). Overtourism: A Literature Review to Assess Implications and Future Perspectives. Sustainability 11. Clark, E. (2005). The order and simplicity of gentrification. A political challenge. In: Atkinson R and Bridge G (eds) Gentrification in a Global Context: The new urban colonialism. Oxford: Routledge. Cocola-Gant A (2018). Tourism gentrification. In: Lees L and Phillips M (eds), Handbook of Gentrification Studies, Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 281–293. Cocola-Gant A & Gago A (2019). Airbnb, buy-to-let investment and tourism-driven displacement. Environment and Planning A. Retrieved from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0308518X19869012 Delgado, M. (2008). Turistofobia. El País, 12 de julio. Retrieved from: https://elpais.com/diario/2008/07/12/catalunya/ 1215824840_850215.html Díaz-Parra, I. (2014). ¿Gentrificación o barbarie? Disciplinamiento y transformación social del barrio de la Alameda de Sevilla. Seville: Atrapasueños. Díaz-Parra, I. (2016). Sevilla 1929-1992. La producción de una mercancía. In La Corrala (coord.), Cartografía de la ciudad capitalista. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 195-201. Donaire, J. A. (2008). La efervescencia de la ‘turismofobia’. Sobre turistas y turismo. Barcelona Metrópolis. Retrieved from: <https://ecoplann.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/barcelonametropolis-jose-antonio- donaire-la/> [26/09/2019] Fernández Duran, R. (2006). El tsunami urbanizador español y mundial. Barcelona: Virus editorial. Fernández Salinas, V. (1993). Las grandes transformaciones urbanas de Sevilla durante los años previos a la exposición universal. Estudios Geográficos, 54(212), 387-407. Flores, C y Ramos, R. (2017). Lo colonial como fuente de autenticidad de los centros históricos de las ciudades mexicanas. El doble colonialismo, Scripta Nova 21(579). Fuller, H. and Michel, B. (2014). Stop Being a Tourist! New Dynamics of Urban Tourism in Berlin-Kreuzberg. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38(4), 1304-1318.