BARCELONA/MADRID — Catalonia, Spain’s most popular region for visitors, has postponed a plan to charge a maximum €15 ($17) daily tourist tax starting in May while it looks for ways to curb overtourism.

The regional government said on Tuesday the increased tax, from the current six to €11, will be implemented in October at the earliest. The government abandoned plans to introduce it by decree and decided to pass it through the regional parliament to avoid potential legal problems.

The plan is to use at least 25% of the tax revenue to ease a housing shortage, which is a prime complaint among residents as rents have soared in the past few years.

Spain expects to surpass last year’s record of 94 million tourist arrivals this year.

The tax range in force currently applies to hotel guests and cruise ship passengers, depending on how luxurious their accommodation is.

The tax-hike plan followed protests by residents about overtourism pushing up housing prices that in one instance involved protesters squirting visitors with water pistols.

Barcelona’s association of tourism apartments, Apartur, said it opposed the increase as it would make holidays more expensive, arguing parliament should only approve any increase gradually.

Tourist arrivals to Catalonia grew by 10% in the first two months of 2025 over last year, a slower pace than in Spain’s capital Madrid, which received 13% more tourists during the same period, according to official data. Madrid does not charge a tourist tax.

The data signals that Catalonia’s measures to reduce overtourism, including restricting licenses for new hotels in central Barcelona, may be paying off. Still, Barcelona room rates rose by 10% in the 12 months through March, compared to Spain’s average of 3%.

The mayor of Barcelona announced last year a ban on apartment rentals to tourists by 2028, a move strongly criticized by platforms such as Airbnb who say it will not solve the housing crisis. — Reuters

SINGAPORE — South Korea’s worst ever wildfires in March were made twice as likely as a result of climate change and such disasters could become even more frequent if temperatures continue to rise, scientists said on Thursday.

Fires in the country’s southeast blazed for nearly a week, killing 32 people and destroying around 5,000 buildings before they were brought under control in late March.

The fires burned through 104,000 hectares (257,000 acres) of land, making them nearly four times more extensive than South Korea’s previous worst fire season 25 years ago.

The hot, dry and windy conditions were made twice as likely and 15% more intense as a result of climate change, a team of 15 researchers with the World Weather Attribution group said after combining observational data with climate modeling.

South Korea normally experiences cold dry winters and rapid increases in temperature in March and April, making it vulnerable to fires at that time of year, said June-Yi Lee of the Research Center for Climate Sciences at Pusan National University.

This year, average temperatures from March 22-26 were 10 degrees Celsius higher than usual in the southeast, and patterns of low and high pressure to the north and south generated the powerful winds that helped the fire spread, she told a briefing.

“This year, the size of the impact was very extreme … because of the dry weather, the heat and the high temperatures — a perfect storm of conditions,” she said.

The weather that drove the fires could become even more common if global warming continues on its current trajectory and rises another 1.3 degrees by 2100.

“The models project on average a further increase of about 5% in intensity and a further doubling of the likelihood of similarly extreme events,” said Clair Barnes of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London (ICL).

The blazes also raised concerns that South Korea’s extensive tree planting programme since the 1970s had made the country more fire-prone, and forest management needs to adjust to meet the challenges of extreme heat, said Theo Keeping at ICL’s Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires.

“Once a wildfire event is extreme enough, it can’t be put out with drops from planes and helicopters or from spraying water from the ground … so we need to manage risk before these events happen,” he said. — Reuters

NEW YORK — Investors were left with little clarity on Wednesday about the health of the US economy despite a fresh report on gross domestic product (GDP), with the fallout from President Donald J. Trump’s sweeping tariffs muddying growth signals.

On its face, the first-quarter data showing the first US economic contraction since 2022 was alarming and brought immediate pressure on US stocks.

But some economists had braced for an even deeper contraction and were encouraged by the data. The weakness stemmed from a surge in imports as businesses sought to avoid higher costs from the new tariffs, a phenomenon that many analysts said was poised to reverse in coming months.

Investors faced a similar position as they had before the highly anticipated report, vulnerable to twists and turns in Mr. Trump’s very much unresolved trade war that stood to keep markets on edge and the potential for a recession still on the table.

“There’s just massive distortion and volatility in the economic data right now because of the pull-through of tariffs,” said Matthew Miskin, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management. The GDP report “doesn’t help shake off this economic contraction fear that has been gripping markets.”

US GDP fell at a 0.3% annualized rate last quarter. Imports jumped at a 41.3% rate, resulting in a large trade gap that chopped off a record 4.83 percentage points from GDP.

“It’s more frustration for the long term investor because you’re not getting a really good read on what the actual economy is doing,” Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide. “We need to know what’s happening in the economy … and reports like this don’t give us a lot of useful data on that.”

Larry Werther, chief US economist of Daiwa Capital Markets America, said he was encouraged that consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, grew at a 1.8% rate, indicating “the domestic economy was still on track” in the first quarter.

Recession was not Mr. Werther’s base assumption “but odds of it in the next 12 months have increased substantially” from the start of the year, he said.

Meanwhile, the persistent uncertainty itself poses a risk to markets.

“This period where tariffs are trying to be negotiated and acknowledged by the market makes things extremely difficult to model, predict, etc,” said Peter Andersen, founder of Andersen Capital Management in Boston.

STOCKS FALL AFTER GDP REPORT
Stock futures fell sharply after the report but major averages pared some of their losses by mid-day. The S&P 500 was last off about 1%, and down 10% from its February record high.

Wednesday’s data leaves investors at a crossroads: On the one hand, even allowing for the one-off tariffs-related hit, the growth picture looks lackluster; while on the other hand, with markets braced for the worst, any signs of better-than-expected data in coming months could spark a rally in risk sentiment.

“People are positioned conservatively … and when that happens, it doesn’t take a ton of good news to move the markets pretty violently positive,” Nationwide’s Mr. Hackett said.

In the meantime, investors are trying to position for a variety of outcomes. Lack of clarity on the tariff situation is leading Sonu Varghese, global macro strategist at Carson Group, to favor a “barbell” approach to portfolios, with defensive, low-volatility stocks at one end and high-momentum, growth equities at the other.

Investors will quickly get another view of the economy on Friday, with the release of the US employment report.

“Everything else is skewed because of tariffs … but right now consumption is still holding the economy together,” Mr. Varghese said.

“If the labor market starts to falter here, then we have a big problem going forward.” — Reuters