INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM, TRAVEL AND HOSPITALITY LAW greatly restricted tourism in their territories. The paradigmatic case is that of the Balearic Islands, which, through Decree-Law 1/2020 of 17 January, regulated against so-called “excess tourism” in order to improve quality in tourist areas, empowering the administration to prohibit certain economic activities related to excess tourism. However, data relating to the summer of 2022 give us an idea that the intention is to continue with the same developmentalist policies, especially on the part of the autonomous communities that are especially dedicated to sun and beach tourism. Thus, according to a press release from the INE, “Spain received 7.0 million international tourists in May, compared to 1.4 million in the same month in 2021”. In view of these data, and this is the aim of this paper, it is interesting to analyse what measures the public authorities can take, and in what sense, to recover the tourism sector without falling into the problems that some destinations suffered before the pandemic. Thus, I believe that this is an unbeatable opportunity to recover the activity, avoiding overcrowding, congestion and gentrification. In short, by committing to quality and sustainable tourism. May the so-called “zero tourism” serve as a catalyst for us not to fall into some of the mistakes we were making before the terrible health crisis. 2. TOURISM ISSUES BEFORE THE PANDEMIC As we have already indicated above, a large part of the doctrine specializing in public intervention in the tourism sector had shown that, in recent years, certain phenomena were occurring that prevented us from speaking of sustainable and quality tourism, which, in principle, is the main objective of the autonomous community laws regulating the sector5. Thus, the overloading of certain destinations, the offer of a tourism of excesses absolutely at odds with quality, the damage to the environment, the gentrification of many cities, outbreaks of “tourism phobia”, etcetera. These are problems that existed before the health crisis and to which attention had already been drawn, 5 SOCIAS CAMACHO, J. M., (2020) ‘Espacio público en la ciudad turística’ in BARRERO RODRIGUEZ, C. y SOCIAS CAMACHO, J. M, La ciudad del siglo XXI: transformaciones y retos, INAP.
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