‘All our eggs in one basket’: touristification and displacement amidst the pandemic in Seville, Spain

Abstract

Touristification refers to the multi-dimensional transformation of an area due to severe and rapid tourism intensification, which can harm that place's inhabitants in different ways. The activity’s boom in the 2010s brought about an exponential increase in short-term tourist rentals (STRs) in traditionally non-tourist areas across cities worldwide, triggering or expanding displacement dynamics. The study delves into the connections between touristification and displacement and how the latter has conditioned neighbors’ lives. As the health crisis abruptly stopped tourist hypermobility, we also question how displacement has been affected and the ways in which it might evolve in the post-pandemic city. We focus on Seville, the capital of Andalusia in southern Spain, a region highly dependent on the tourism and real estate sectors that has annually broken its visitors’ records until the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. We reflect upon how local populations in central and increasingly tourist neighborhoods have experienced expulsion before and amidst the pandemic through thirty interviews with residents and displacees from different socio-economic backgrounds in Seville's historic district. We conclude that the reconversion of STRs into long-term leases during and after the pandemic has resolved little compared with the damage already done.