Catalonia clamps down on 'booze and babes' tourism

Authorities in Catalonia, alarmed that Barcelona's architectural landmarks and Costa Brava resorts are gaining an unsavoury reputation as "booze and babes" playgrounds, are planning a summer crackdown on rowdy visitors from northern Europe.

Barcelona, long a magnet for Europeans for its beauty, its cuisine and its free-and-easy Mediterranean lifestyle, has become a favourite destination for hard-drinking stag and hen-night crowds and college graduation parties.

Last summer British, German and Dutch tourists invaded Catalonia's beach resorts and handsome urban squares, and outraged locals with their noisy, all-night partying, sexual promiscuity and uncontrolled vomiting in Gothic passageways and Art Nouveau doorsteps.

Given the clattering air conditioning of hotel rooms, local residents complained they couldn't sleep without double glazing; and that their streets were filthy with rubbish and body fluids. Doctors found the cost of treating youngsters who fell into comas after three-day drinking binges far outstripped the sums they spent during their visits.

The authorities, who have long encouraged down-market mass tourism with low prices and a tolerant attitude, have finally had enough. The Barcelona town hall, and the Catalan regional government, have drawn up a battery of measures to stamp out anti-social - what they call "uncivil" - behaviour.

First targets are the countless unofficial websites for cheap Catalan resorts that promise booze, wild street parties, "cool chicks, beach frolics and fun", to those who get themselves on a flight from, say, Liverpool to Gerona for €10 (£6.90) or from Cologne to Barcelona for €1.

"We can't allow our region to turn into a human rubbish tip for everyone not wanted by other European countries," Xavier Guitart, of the region's tourism ministry, complained. "We are not prepared to prostitute our region for €4."

The Catalan government is to crack down on dozens of websites containing "illegal" ads. The region's interior minister, Montserrat Tura, knows it will be difficult to act against foreign advertisers, often private individuals seeking to organise group visits on the cheap.

Her solution - to ask Europol for help in fighting unscrupulous online party- organisers - seems already to have had an effect. Many such sites have suddenly gone blank.

In addition, the authorities have banned street vendors, skateboarders, jugglers, bongo-drummers, DVD sellers, windscreen-cleaners, beggars, graffiti artists, clients soliciting prostitutes in the street, and anyone drinking in public squares, or dressed indecorously, or urinating (or satisfying other "physiological needs") in public.

The region's police, renowned nationwide for their zeal and efficiency, will impose fines from €300 to €1,500, preferably in cash, on the spot. Likely targets are backbackers of the world who treat the historic Plaza Reial as an open air youth hostel, and bands of itinerant Euro-hippies in camper vans.

Barcelona's socialist mayor, Joan Clos, considers his measures against uncivilised behaviour "a priority", and promises to step up implementation as the tourist season approaches.

The city wants to attract a better class of visitor by reasserting the cultural appeal of its maritime boulevards, Gaudi buildings and world-class museums, and remind Europe's party animals that Catalonia, for all its exuberance, always did have its austere side.