Tourists visiting the southern Spanish city of Seville may soon have to pay a fee to explore the wide, ornate Plaza de Espana square, the city hall said, as part of plans to control tourist overload in a public open space.
“We are planning to close the Plaza de Espana and charge tourists to finance its conservation and ensure its safety,” Mayor Jose Luis Sanz wrote in a post on social media platform X, accompanied with a video showing missing tiles, damaged facades and street vendors occupying alcoves and stairs.
Complete with a semicircular Neo-Moorish palatial structure framed with tall towers on both ends and four bridges over a moat, the Plaza is part of a complex built for the 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition that was designed to reflect Spanishness in its architecture and tiled decorations.
Thousands of people from all over the world visit it daily, in horse-drawn carriages or on foot.
The structure served as the set of the 1999 film “The Phantom Menace” of the Star Wars franchise, and is also a hot spot of cultural life in Seville, hosting concerts, plays and fashion shows.
