As the official plan from the mayor’s office states, “our priority is to restore the park for the residents and at the same time to reduce the numbers of tourists visiting this place.” The restoration works are expected to be completed by 2022, when Barcelona will celebrate 100 years of Park Güell’s history.
The project envisages hundreds of measures related to three key facets of park visitation: public use, legacy preservation, and accessibility improvement. Plans also include decreasing the advertisement of the park and thereby lessening its use as one of the symbols of Barcelona.
In addition to these measures, the city plans to simplify the free visits to the park. Currently, any E.U. resident with a registration in the Gaudir Més program can pay a free visit to Park Güell. As the mayor’s office maintains, this program represents an obstacle for the ordinary residents of Barcelona, who are not registered in this program, to gain access to the park because they must wait in the general lines. As an immediate solution, the lines at the park entrance will now be divided.
Another issue is the accessibility of the park to the general public. In response, the municipal authorities expect to “offload” buses #24 and #92 – the routes most frequently used by tourists to reach the park. The city is considering creating information centers as well.
Park Güell accepts about 9 million visitors per year, of which 3 million pay for entrance, and only 1 % of the visitors are native residents of Barcelona. The park takes in 15 million euros annually, with half of this sum dispersed as payment to the personnel and to cover other maintenance needs.