%0 Journal Article
%T Making sense of the square: Facing the touristification of public space through playful protest in Barcelona
%A Elisa Bruttomesso
%J Tourist Studies
%@ 1741-3206
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1468797618775219
%X Drawing from assemblage thinking, this article explores the complexity of urban tourism conflicts. The case study of a playful urban intervention in Barcelona exhibits the connections that link place-based activism, local identity construction and sense of place in relation to the tourism development. The productive case study, called Fem Pla£¿a (Let¡¯s make the square), highlights the more proactive rather than merely reactive role of inhabitants. Moreover, it allows for a better understanding of protest as a series of relational, processual practices of empowerment, overcoming the efficiency rhetoric that values a process only for its final success. Finally, this study strives to expand the tourist analysis to the performance and performativity of the local people¡¯s disaffection in urban contexts to ensure a broader comprehensiveness in the tourist academic field
%K assemblage thinking
%K Barcelona
%K local performativity
%K playful protest
%K urban tourism conflicts
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1468797618775219