The coronavirus crisis is greatly affecting tourism, but tourism itself has also fueled this crisis due to the "hypermobility" of recent years. The SET network, which brings together 25 tourist cities in southern Europe, including San Sebastian and Pamplona, but also Barcelona, Lisbon and Venice, has presented a joint reading of the situation generated by COVID-19.

The network has expressed solidarity with vulnerable sectors suffering the consequences of the crisis, "at a time when inequalities have multiplied".As you have explained, it has long been reported that the tourism economy "is nothing more than an extremist industry outsourcing costs", and now, in your opinion, all this has become apparent.

They have denounced that gentrification and urbanization have reduced and weakened neighborhood support networks, "an essential tool" in emergency situations. The SET network wanted to thank all those who work to ensure essential services, including "those who keep Community relations alive" or small business workers.

"We can now see the epidemic risk posed by ecological imbalances that generate disproportionate relationships between the human species and its environment." Although pollution has been reduced in recent months, they say that it is "a temporary improvement" and that if you want a "sustainable" change "you can no longer feed social injustice and the climate emergency".

Reformulating the economy: lower, less tourist housing

The network is committed to an inclusive, "balanced and diversified" economy, which takes into account all citizens and basic services, and which has as its "central axis" the growth, "compatible" with life and the planet. To do so, they considered that "proposals must be made from the bottom".

In this sense, they have proposed a series of measures in the tourism field to "correct the tourist hegemony" and to move forward in a "socio-ecological transition".

They propose, among other things, that the decline in the tourism sector should also be organised and that under no circumstances should the sector with the most public debt be rescued. Public expenditure should, in his view, be geared towards the basic needs of society. In addition, they consider that in order to protect citizens from real estate speculation, the number of tourist homes in the Basque Country "should be reduced completely".

The benefits of the tourism sector, for its part, should be redistributed to the whole of society, and in view of the precarious employment of this sector, decent jobs should be created in relation to cultural development and the environment.

"At a time when this crisis is overtaken, we were used to not returning to normal, the key is to take advantage of this crisis to build a more just, egalitarian and supportive society. That is the only way to ensure that everything goes well."