Regrettably, the principled, activist nudists of Barcelona are going to be denied their freedoms by new regulations aimed at the very unprincipled behavior of mass tourists.

Indeed, nudism’s few local proponents are themselves divided. Just Roca, 56, a specialist in sexology who participated in Mr. Tunick’s mass photo, quit Mr. Ribas’s association over “philosophical differences” about nudity and founded his own group called Aleteia, a rendering of the Greek word for truth. Nudist beaches and camps, common enough in Spain, he said, “are born of a culture that says being dressed is normal — I say nudity is the natural situation.”

Mr. Roca compares the campaign against nudity to a parallel proposal to ban the wearing of the Muslim women’s veil, often called the burqa, in public places, as several nearby cities in the Catalonia region have done and as the Barcelona City Council is considering. Mr. Roca called both measures forms of segregation. “It’s like ‘No Negroes,’ ” he said. Just as politicians fear that a burqa-clad woman has something to hide, he said, “they imagine an undressed person has something to hide, too.”

Guy Reifenberg, 37, whose travel agency, Kokopeli, organizes adventure tours, said that the proposed sanctions were less a crackdown on nudity than a way to rein in the excesses of mass tourism, which is currently swamping Barcelona.

“The city’s afraid of the kind of tourists it’s attracting,” said Mr. Reifenberg, a native of Israel who has lived here for six years. These tourists, he said, go for “cheap alcohol, partying, hanging out in the street, and not spending money.” As a result, the city’s business community — hotels, restaurants, bars and retail outlets — has put pressure on the mayor, Jordi Hereu, a Socialist who faces an uphill battle for re-election in May.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 at 10:30 am.