Resumo: The years leading up to the outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic saw a significant growth in tourist arrivals, which led to several problems that came to be known as “overtourism”. The reduction of tourist pressure became an important aspect of the management of historic centers and involved the adoption of various strategies, including demarketing. The aim of this paper is to determine the contribution of this strategy to the control of overtourism in the historic centers of Spanish cities. To this end, demarketing actions in Barcelona, Bilbao, Donostia-San Sebastián, Madrid, Santiago de Compostela, Seville and Valencia have been identified and analyzed through the study of plans, brochures, tourism websites and social networks. Although specific demarketing actions have been applied in all these destinations, especially those related to decentralization and diversification objectives, in general there is a notable lack of use of their potential to reduce the tourist pressure on historic centers. In fact, even in the most intense moments of overtourism, traditional models of tourism management oriented towards the undifferentiated attraction of a greater number of visitors and the promotion of heritage tourist attractions suffering from saturation continued to prevail.
