- On the weekend the 2023 edition of the Tour de France will depart from Bilbao and the race will run through Euskal Herria in the first three stages. The tour will start in Bilbao and pass through cities such as Vitoria, San Sebastian or Baiona. The San Sebastian Neighbourhood Platform has denounced that this Grand Tour Department is going to be used to boost the business of a minority and has proposed a series of measures of tourist deceleration, such as the suppression of the public budget of tourism promotion or the empowerment of the local sports community instead of international events.
The movement with Bizilagun has pointed out that career development, organisation, logistics and infrastructure will be financed with public money, over EUR 14 million, to be borne by public institutions. To this public expenditure, they consider it difficult to add the impact of the career in the daily life of citizens: closing streets and roads, inconveniences in services and reducing transportation and mobility, among others. "If this is not enough, as long as public investment and damage are provided by citizens, the economic benefits of the exercise will be borne by the tourism industry. The profits will end in four pockets that control the tourism sector, which, as we know, is one of the economic sectors that least redistributes wealth," they report.
You see that adhesion to cycling and its values has been used to promote the tourism business in Euskal Herria
They consider that the Basque Country is very linked to cycling, it is a very amateur sport and with a lot of passion. Aware of this, they see that adherence to Basque cycling and its values have been used to promote the tourism business of the Grand del Tour de France Department. "During these days our territory, culture and identity are on sale to increase the economic benefits of the tourism industry."
In this "commodification" of local culture and heritage, they consider the Basque theme to be significant. Although citizens have difficulties to live in Basque in most areas of life, and are in a background in the socioeconomic and public sphere, which can contribute to the promotion of tourism, they see that through marketing strategies folklorization and fetishization exercises are carried out, with the express mention of the motto “well eTOUR”.
"The operation has little to do with cycling"
"In short, the operation Grand Department Pays Basque has little to do with the values of cycling, with the Basque identity, with the support of the agents of basic cycling, with the organization of local races... but it is closely linked to the increase in the price of the rooms of the hotels in Bilbao, to the 1,659 holiday homes that are operating throughout the year in San Sebastian, and to the promotion of a business that is enriched by They present us as something for the common good, an activity that redistributes very little wealth in society", they have rounded.
In this regard, the Bizilagun platform of the Donostiarras for tourism growth has made three requests:
On the one hand, the elimination of the public budget for tourism promotion in order to bring tourist activity to "sustainable measures and conditions", within the process of tourist growth, and, on the other, the "orientation to the reparation of the social, economic and ecological damage of tourism". Secondly, to suspend the giant tourist promotion events "disguised as sporting events". Making decisions when organising sports activities, competitions or events, focusing on the needs of the citizens, allocating public budgets to sports initiatives arising from local communities and not to tourist businesses "in the hands of a few".
Finally, they call on the City Hall presiding over Eneko Goia to stop using public space for the benefit of private interests and to facilitate its use to initiatives that make up sport, culture and collective public life.