Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million, saw more than 58,000 tourists arrive on cruise ships over the last weekend.
The arrival numbers created a new record for the most cruise passengers to visit. Barcelona was already known as the Mediterranean cruise capital and there is no indication the trend is abating.
They disembarked from a total of 14 ships. One of them was the Allure of the Seas, the largest such vessel in the world capable to carrying more than 6,300 passengers.
Cruise passengers spent almost €800 million in Barcelona last year and helped create some 7,000 full-time jobs, according to a joint University of Barcelona and Barcelona Port report.
"The report shows that the cruise sector generates investment and jobs and is an activity that creates growth and stability, which are the basis for economic development," Barcelona Port president Sixte Cambra said.
Rather than shying away from the vast numbers capable to descending, he went on to say that the next challenge is how to accommodate even more cruise liners in order to gain more income.
But in reality cruise passengers nearly always jostle the locals out of the old Town while buying little more than a bottle of water.
This opinion is not shared by the new mayor who is concerned about the downside of mass tourism, such as litter, noise, rocketing property prices is locking locals out of the market. Ada Colau has proposed a moratorium on new hotels and licences for private apartments rented to visitors.
As many as nine million visitors are expected in Barcelona this year.
She has also expressed concern over the environmental impact of cruise liners docking in the city, an issue which was not covered in the report.
Cambra said that a separate report on this has been commissioned.
