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Malaga's mayor Francisco de la Torre is trying to escape the controversy caused by the contract recently offered by his council to publicise seven alternative tourist routes around the historic city centre, an area the council considers to be saturated by tourism. In the document to put this initiative out to tender, the city council's tourism department admitted that "Malaga is experiencing unprecedented levels of tourist saturation, particularly in its historic centre", and that "this phenomenon causes certain areas to exceed their carrying capacity, negatively affecting both residents and visitors."
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Jesús Hinojosa
When asked by journalists, De la Torre sought to correct the words from the council's tourism department officials who drew up the report and which were included in the terms of the contract. He clarified the comment as follows: "With regard to the word saturation, it should be specified that it occurs only at certain times because it is not a daily issue, just on certain occasions."
Likewise, the mayor also made corrections to the statement from the municipal tourism department, whose report also pointed out that "mass tourism can lead to the proliferation of low-quality gastronomic establishments, deteriorating the culinary experience for both tourists and locals." De la Torre qualified that statement as follows: "Perhaps that was not a very appropriate term of expression because I don't know of a single one in Malaga. I'm quite categorical about that, there's not a single one. All our eating places have quality, more or less." The mayor further announced that he would pass on this opinion to his tourism department.
De la Torre is confident that the visitor routes to be publicised in order to ease congestion around the old part of town will be successful. He reminded the press conference of the time when he proposed taking the archaeological museum to the convent of La Trinidad with the same objective of diverting tourist traffic. "They didn't spot that opportunity neither at regional government level nor centrally in Madrid."
"What else is Tabacalera [Malaga's old tobacco factory, now a cultural space], or betting on the Auditorium? Work is being done to create these centres of attraction. It is about creating elements that are worth seeing. We have them and we want alternative routes to come out of this bid to redistribute the tourist population", stated the mayor. His reasoning is that "it is about looking for new spaces with tourist life in a city that has a very centralised heritage."
To this end city hall has put out to tender the contracting of a company to draw up a communication and information dissemination plan for alternative tourist routes - a contract worth 530,210 euros. In order to "redirect" tourist flows from the most saturated areas to other areas of the city with "tourist potential", the tourism department within Malaga council has designed seven routes through the following areas: La Malagueta, Soho, Pedregalejo, Tabacalera, a tour of the mountains and nature areas surrounding the city, another through the vestiges of industrial heritage and lastly one through the historic districts such as Perchel and Trinidad.
The company that implements this plan for the decongestion of tourism in the city centre has to create a brand and a communication plan, involving the creation of a website, content on social media, audiovisual pieces to upload to YouTube and a programme of tourist ambassadors and actions with influencers among other measures that will have to provide results.
One of the challenges of this plan is that it has to be developed before 30 April 2026, as it is financed with European funds from the Next Generation programme, which obliges the governing bodies in receipt of such funding to justify the expenses within a certain period of time. Companies interested in developing this tourism shake-up and redistribution plan have until 21 February to submit their bids.
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