Government to invest €12 million to make Catalonia a food and wine travel destination

Catalonia has a lot to offer to visitors from the beach to the mountains, but also on the gastronomical side. The Catalan government wants to push the latter. The business and labor ministry will invest €12m to make Catalonia a leading destination for wine tasting and tourism.

The new plan announced on Monday will run until 2027 and aims to give "prestige" to Catalonia's offering of food and wine. The plan will help attract visitors throughour the year, rather than during summer only, and the ministry hopes it will bring tourists to locations other than Barcelona.

NextGenerationEU recovery funds will provide €8m out of the €12m, while the remainder will come from the Catalan tourism administration (Direcció General de Turisme). 

The government will build new infrastructure to bring new activities across Catalonia, but also focus on visitors’ wine preferences, and concentrate on the available wine options. Those who are part of the project will also have a new marketing strategy to promote their product.

Travelers who go wine-tasting, trying the local food produce too, tend to spend 3.5 times more than other visitors. This is why they want to focus on this market "which we have not believed in enough until now," Catalan business and labor minister, Roger Torrent, said on Monday when presenting the investment.

In front of around one hundred business people, the minister said "we have nothing to envy from other quality wine and gastronomic regions." 

Catalonia, he emphasized, is currently the territory with the highest number of Michelin star restaurants, and one of the Spanish autonomous regions with the most Denominations of Origin (DO). It has 11 focused on wine production, while a twelfth one which is the DO Cava (sparkling wine).

"Private and public sectors need to align their efforts to put in place a strategy for the country," Torrent added. 

According to figures released by Prodeca, the promoter of Catalan food products, Catalonia has 8,359 winegrowers, employing over 4,800 people with an economic impact of €1.18 billion.