The words ‘Tourists Go Home’ are spray-painted on a wall in the artists’ quarter Vila de Gràcia in Barcelona. — EMILIO RAPPOLD/dpa
“They should all be sent packing, and best close the borders!” a woman in her 80s grumbles, her face contorted with rage, as she schlepps home with her shopping bags past the famous Park Güell in Barcelona, Spain.
“The Brits and Germans are the worst, they make our lives hell here,” the pensioner yells, after a group of young tourists fails to move out of the way on the narrow pavement. Her insults are met with cheers from a group of elderly gentleman sitting in a nearby café.
“I spit on the scum from my balcony,” one of them says to the jeers of his friends.
Not everyone is using words this drastic, but it’s proving difficult to find a local in Barcelona who isn’t fed up with the ever-growing number of tourists descending on the city every year, especially in the summer.
Turismofobia – tourism phobia – isn’t a phenomenon unique to Barcelona though. Other regions in Spain – a top holiday destination for many Europeans – including the Canary Islands, Mallorca and Galicia, are seeing a rising resentment among the local population towards mass tourism, with more and more showing their anger openly, and sometimes violently.
In many places, locals have been organising protest rallies but others have gone further. A group of activists called Caterva on the island of Mallorca, particularly popular with German and British tourists, tried to scare foreign tourists away from the beaches on the island’s eastern coast in August by putting up deceptively real-looking signs in English announcing a swimming ban or warning of “dangerous jellyfish” or falling rocks.
The group later justified their action by saying they wanted to fight the “expropriation” of the beaches by holidaymakers.
In Barcelona, residents of the El Carmel district near Park Güell recently messed with signs indicating the way to the old bunkers on the hill Turó de la Rovira to mislead tourists.
The viewpoint, which offers one of the best panoramic views of the city, turned into a hotspot for sunset and picnic fans in recent years, but also for TikTokers, Instagrammers and party tourists, with thousands gathering on the hill in the evening to the sounds of DJs.
Following fierce confrontations between residents and tourists, the city decided in May to close the area between 7.30pm and 9am. According to neighbours, however, many still trek to the hilltop at night regardless of the new rule.
Neighbourhood nuisance
Residents near Park Güell, which was designed by renowned Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí and is now Barcelona’s second most popular tourist attraction after the Sagrada Familia church despite a hefty €10 (RM49.70) entrance fee, also suffer from the never-ending stream of visitors flooding their neighbourhood.
Carina, who lives a few blocks away with her son, says “the chaos is getting worse and worse”.
“It’s the noise, the rubbish. But not only here. I’ve never seen the whole city so dirty,” she says. Another issue, according to the health worker, is the tourists’ behaviour.
“There are always people sitting in front of our front door, blocking the way,” said Carina, clad in a motorbike helmet on the way to the hospital.
Residents near Park Guell have put up fake signboards to mislead tourists into going the wrong way. — Pixabay
While she still has hope that Barcelona’s tourism problem can be solved somehow, Sandra, a young jewellery designer, has thrown in the towel. She’s selling her house and moving away with her partner, “maybe to a quiet beach”.
“The whole city is suffering (from mass tourism),” the young woman says.
This is most apparent, perhaps, in the narrow alleys of the artistic quarter of Vila de Gràcia. Walls, garage doors, billboards and monuments are covered in graffiti demanding that “TOURISTS GO HOME”, with further anti-tourism slogans displayed on yellow stickers and large banners.
But it’s not a small radical minority that’s behind this, says Ester from the neighbourhood association Verdi del Mig. “We all think the same.”
A woman with short grey hair busy preparing the neighbourhood’s street festival interrupts her work to speak about the issue but is soon joined by countless others all looking to vent their anger. “We can’t dance in the street at the festival like we used to,” they say, complaining that English has become the dominant language on the streets, making the locals feel like “strangers in our own house”.
Many tourists get drunk and start to harass people, a young woman says. Meanwhile, almost every second, tourists pass by the agitated group without realising that they are the subject of the heated discussion.
More to come
According to estimates by the responsible authorities, Spain is facing a new record year with 85 million expected to visit in 2023 – 1.3 million more than the record number seen before the pandemic in 2019.
The tourism sector accounts for 12% of the country’s gross domestic product, and around a third in the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands.
But from Barcelona to Santiago de Compostela, the destination of the Way of St James in north-western Spain, complaints are mounting about visitors who not only wander the streets drunk and bawling until early in the morning, but also sleep and defecate in the open.
The government and tourism industry have long been aware that the population has had enough, though often remain non-committal when it comes to solving the issue.
“The tourism phobia in the Canary Islands is becoming worrying,” new regional tourism minister Jessica de León said recently. Jordi Valls, the city councillor responsible for economic development in Barcelona, meanwhile admitted frankly in an interview with the La Vanguardia newspaper: “Is there a limit to tourism in Barcelona? Yes, there is. Have we reached that limit? Probably.”
The president of the hoteliers’ association of Playa de Palma on Mallorca, a beach that includes a particularly infamous party strip, has clearer words.
“It is not acceptable that the residents are afraid to go for a walk here,” Pedro Marín told the Última Hora newspaper.
“This summer there have been rapes, stabbings, thefts, drugs ... a disaster.”
To solve the issue, Mallorca’s hotels are trying to attract “decent tourists”, he says, but a bigger police presence and a “firm hand” are also needed.
How exactly Marín and his fellow hoteliers are going to prevent those looking to party like there’s no tomorrow from returning to their beloved Mallorca remains to be seen, especially as the island depends so much on tourism revenue. – dpa
