Nestled between the Prades mountains to the east and the Serra de Montsant to the west, on the slope of a limestone cliff at an altitude of 740 meters, the picturesque village of Siurana rises. It belongs to the municipality of Cornudella de Montsant in the Catalan province of Tarragona and can only be reached via a winding road through a ravine. Once at the top, visitors are presented with a fascinating view of a river valley. The characteristic rocky landscape around the village attracts climbers from all over the world to Siurana.
But the problem lies in the beauty of the village: 419,000 people come to the area around Siurana every year, more than 1,800 visitors on a single day in August. There are already so many tourists that on some days the access to the village has to be closed; then there are queues from 15 minutes to half an hour. Just over 20 people live in Siurana, and there are only five restaurants and two hotels in the village. “We don’t have enough space to take care of more people,” said the mayor of Cornudella de Montsant, Salvador Salvadó, to the EFE news agency.
Siurana was recently declared a “Pueblo con encanto”, a charming village, by the Catalan government. An organization that selects the most beautiful towns in Spain wanted to go one step further and proposed adding Siurana to their list. Fearing that the award would only exacerbate the massive influx of visitors, the city council turned it down. The idea will be examined, but is “not interested at the moment”. El pueblo que no quiere ser el más bonitoheadlined the Spanish newspapers: The village that doesn’t want to be the prettiest.
“It would bring us more cars, more buses and a greater influx of people, just when we are actually working to regulate this situation,” Salvador Salvadó said Catalunya Radio. He is not against tourism, but wants to prevent the village from being overrun: “We want the people who come to Siurana to leave satisfied.” He compares the situation to selling the milk but not having the cow: the two parking lots are already limited to 180 spaces, and expansion is not possible because of their location in a nature reserve.
As in other villages, however, the people in Siurana depend on tourism – and accordingly there are also voices that view the decision critically. Like the neighborhood association that would have liked to be consulted by the mayor. Or the owner of a campsite who wants to offer tourists more so that they stay in the village a little longer. “The problem is not that Siurana is beautiful. The problem is that nothing has been done to deal with the influx of visitors,” Andreu Bartolomé, who owns a restaurant in Siurana, told the newspaper El País. And so the village remains hidden for the time being.