Barcelona anti-tourism protesters fire water pistols at visitors
Protesters in Barcelona have sprayed visitors with water as part of a demonstration against mass tourism.
Demonstrators marching through areas popular with tourists on Saturday chanted “tourists go home” and squirted them with water pistols, while others carried signs with slogans including “Barcelona is not for sale.”
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the city in the latest demonstration against mass tourism in Spain, which has seen similar actions in the Canary Islands and Mallorca recently, decrying the impact on living costs and quality of life for local people.
The demonstration was organised by a group of more than 100 local organizations, led by the Assemblea de Barris pel Decreixement Turístic (Neighborhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth).
I fucking guarantee every single one of the locals out there spraying people and yelling at tourists has been a tourist at some point in their life. Even if it was for a day trip to Madrid or Valencia or Bilbao, they were tourists who didn't deserve to be attacked just for seeing some place new. They are just hateful hypocrites who like annoying people for fun.
They have a legitimate concern with housing prices and how the government has allowed (until recently) Airbnb to drive up their housing costs. But the tourists aren't the problem. And if they want to get rid of all tourists, let them A) find out how much their economy relies on tourism, and B) never be allowed to leave their city again.
They've done a good job of broadcasting that tourism is a problem there. I'll respect that next time I make travel plans. Assuming others think like me, then the protest has been effective.
Yup. Sucks to be those tourists for sure but it's not like they were in danger.
Just a shitty feeling. You come to appreciate the culture, food, the views, you name it; to just be a visitor, a guest, and you get yelled at to go home.
Fucking yell at your government for allowing Airbnb to fester, instead of randos who support local businesses...
(not directed at you, just venting)
Nope. At least in Lisbon (which is probably just the same as Barcelona) the vast majority of them go straight at the tourist traps. They barely get any contact with the culture beyond having some foreigner guide pretend he knows about the city point at things while driving their rickshaw in the most annoying possible way. At the end of the day they end up eating whatever sounds foreign while listening to foreign music. This is an actual common complaint people have in Lisbon, that it is not Lisbon, it has been pretending it is Disneyland for the last 10-15 years.
There are places where people do that kind of tourism you're describing. Barcelona, Lisbon and a few more popular places, for the vast majority of tourists, is not.
As for the "support" argument, they mostly support low-wage low-qualification boss-owns-50-other-places businesses while, collaterally, raising the expenses of every other business, prompting those to just close the doors and move elsewhere. If you are qualified in basically anything, the job market in Lisbon is a mess. Plenty of people do lie about their qualifications to state them as lower than they are, just in order to get these crap jobs. The purchasing power fell, locals are actually much poorer since the mass tourism wave that started when the world rebound from 2008. The median salary in Lisbon is like 1000€ while a rent for a cube starts at like 800-1200€.
As for the "yell at the government", I don't know about the situation in Barcelona, but in Portugal, the far-right just received 20% of the votes because they are the only ones addressing those problems (in a very "close the doors" kind of way). Some municipalities straight up started not giving a damn at as they cash in more from the tourists than from the local's taxes. Oeiras and Cascais, two kind of famous tourist destinations next to Lisbon straight up are renaming official stuff to English in order to appease their real clients (eg. Not the people who live there).
One thing I didn't see you mention is that Spain and Portugal have a specific issue which I haven't really seen anywhere else, which is the British coming there so much that some areas are basically turning into UK-bis zones but with more sun. If you go around Málaga you find more pubs and Guinness than tapas. You lose everything that makes these places what they are. And it's not just tourism as you'd think about where people come for a week or two, but also a lot of people buying property and either living there part time or moving there for retirement, compounding these real estate issues.
That's Algarve for you. It just straight away stopped having Portuguese people. The entire south coast of Portugal is now a British colony.
Except the retirees, people only go there in the summer so, by May, "business" owners need to hire like 50k persons willing to do crap jobs and by September they all get fired. Ofc that people aren't really willing to do that so we get the added bonus of bosses going to journals to complain that "there isn't a shortage of jobs, it is the Portuguese that do not want to work". What a dream job, to live in a cardboard box to appease Brits looking for the cheapest nice-place.
Whatever happened there that was Portuguese is no more.
Interesting. Valid points...
yeah I'll respect that by not going to Barcelona
That's what they would prefer and the point of their protests. Sarcasm doesn't really fit here in this context.
My understanding is the people understand tourism funds things, but that they dont appreciate the divided treatment, such as the water restrictions tourists do not have to abide by.
Barcelona is overrated anyway, IMO. There are many better cities/towns in Spain.
Never been to Barcelona and never wanted to go even though people kept telling me it’s beautiful (sounded overhyped to me).
Now I want to go there less, and I’m happy about that :D
There's a lot of nuance there with very vocal people due to recent history. It also has a lot to do with awareness of the major water restrictions residents are under but tourists are not (thus the water pistols). If they make news scaring off tourists, it forces the government to reconsider the balance they've put on tourist funding vs local economy.
I'm not saying I like what's happening or not, just saying there is a lot to unpack when you don't live there.
It's also quite likely the majority was not born in Barcelona
Do you have a source for that?
It's a big city, I think it's pretty common that people move there from all over the country for work/studies.
I don't think that's relevant at all. Residents of Barcelona should still not be pushed out by BnBs.
People need to realize that tourism is almost like a favour to a country. You literally generate value in your home and go pour it into another economy.
Tourism has always been mutually beneficial and any government can and has the right to reduce it if they really really want to, they don’t though cause they like the money.
It seems more effective to get short term rentals banned in their city by organizing and speaking to their local city council.
Squirting unsuspecting visitors with water guns seems ineffective and unlikely to achieve any results.
It got them enough attention to make it to the CNN...
You make a point, but I still question if a CNN article will achieve the desired results. People ought to discuss with their local representatives to achieve things.
Their local representative probably doesn’t give a shit, but now that it’s making international news and making them look bad they might act.
Now that I know about this in Colorado, surely it will get better
The town hall intends to ban short term rentals in a few years. Definitely far too slow, but it has gotten to the point that even politicians who want to see their city's coffers grow fat admit that it's an economic activity that does more harm than good.
Yup.
Like many cities around the world, AirBNB (and similar) redirecting housing into short term rentals has had a massive negative impact on long term housing for local residents.
Well, that and the constant crackdown governments do on new construction. AirBNB takes housing out of the supply and over-strict zoning prevents new housing from coming in.
You mean the zoning laws, that demand houses to be built for people living in them instead of tourist short term rentals? Yeah bad bad zoning laws.
There many things wrong with many zoning laws. Of course it's dependent municipality, but in many places light residential is given preference, neighbourhoods are designed for driving. Wide roads designed to have higher speed limits so aren't all that walkable. Zoning is done separately for residential, commercial, and industrial. So there's no shops close by to walk to, so gotta use a car.
It all adds up to neighbourhoods that aren't all that livable. But older parts of a cities that were built before all this zoning are walkable, there's a good mix of housing and shops. Those places are were people want to live. But also where tourists want to stay.
Bad zoning laws indeed.
ABnB is the worst. Once it moved away from "renting a room in an occupied house" to "become a landlord with less steps and no oversight!" it became a blight.
I love it. If they protest peacefully like this, it's innefective. If they are violent, or destructive it's innefective. Do you really think if talking with politicians worked we would be in this situation? They are trying to get more attention to the problem and this worked perfectly.
I'm noticing this tactic a lot of people shitting on activism by handwringing about "Oh I'm totally one of you and I totally agree with your goals but your tactics are just going too far!"
MLK decried this exact thing in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
Attacking tourists is not exactly a solution and will just fuck their economy up even more.
It's totally harmless and works to grab the media attention.
It's water
What if they have an allergy to water?
In a hostile context even the most harmless of things can become weapons.
For example, do you care if the guy in school gets a bucket of water emptied above them while being ridiculed by bullies?
It's just water at the end, so what?
This analogy is a ridiculous false equivalence.
Just because you don't understand his point doesn't make it a false equivalence.
Yes a kid being bullied by their peers in a school with a bucket of water is the same as adult tourists in a foreign city being squirt as a protest against rampant overtourism. Why didn't I see the overt similarities. It's definitely more than just the use of water
See, I said you didn't understand his point, and you've just proven it. He never directly compared those two acts, but in your stupidity, you can't seem to see something that obvious.
The point is idiotic and ignores all context between the two acts. It literally does compare the two acts or it's irrelevant to bring up. That's what an analogy does.
Except for dumb as shit Internet debater assholes who base their usernames on mid tier novelists, I guess.
Your point is idiotic, that's why it's easily countered by an analogy that is not relevant to the story. Maybe you should've countered him with a better point, instead of relying on overused talking points such as false equivalence to avoid thinking more logically. His point was only to show how stupid the point you brought up was, not to serve as an analogy to the real act.
Not only are you unable to think logically, you even had to rely on mocking my username to try and win this argument. Why so desperate that you had to use such a classic Internet debater move? The projection is really just the icing on the cake.
No, you see:
The original user didn't reply to my disagreement like a maladjusted prick, unlike you. So they got a civil disagreement back.
Unlike them, I do hope you get "attacked" by a 5 year old with a water gun this summer. 🤓
How so?
It illustrates the hostility experienced by the target. It's just water, which is by itself harmless.
But:
In the one case it is a demeaning gesture by bullies, which does imply so much more than "just water".
In the other case it is experiencing aggression, possibly being shouted at or insulted, which also causes more than "just water".
How would you feel?
You plan a trip to the city, with your partner and kids. And then you come accross angry people who tell you to fuck off while shooting at you and your family with water pistols.
Would you feel the same way about this as if it was just raining?
To me, and probably a lot of people, this is certainly another and far more hostile experience, which is also not a pleasant one.
Because your analogy is ignoring both the volume of water involved and the context that surrounds both actions, one being actual bullying.
There is a world of difference in the psychological impact of a bullied child being soaked with a bucket of water by their peers and strangers being squirt with water guns by locals as a form of protest.
In the former, I would be dealing with peers and the feelings of social exclusion that come from bullying and unacceptance. People in my peer group would likely have been there pointing and laughing. There would be fear of having to run into my bullies on a daily basis who would be specifically targeting me as a single individual for no other reason but aggression or to assert dominance or whatever reasons a bully would have. The bullying period would likely have no definite end in sight.
In the later, I would at worst feel a bit of embarrassment and maybe some annoyance. Maybe I'd worry about running into the protestors again. But then my trip would end and I would be home. The protesters also are unlikely to be following me and my family around as specific people to harass and will instead be protesting generally.
And yeah this just comes off as Internet debate stuff to me. I said "it's water" instead of specifically "it was a water gun squirt". "hmm, having you ever considered tidal waves though. Water can be violent". Wow. Thanks.
And again, my response was to demean the overdramatic use of the word "attacked".
If someone jumped out of a bush and squirt you with a water gun a few times then ran away, would you call emergency services and tell them you were "attacked" by someone? If so, you really think that would be a good use of your local police force's time and wouldn't be exaggerating the situation?
It's incredibly soft to describe being shot at with a water gun as "attacked". Sorry. I hope a 5 year old doesn't "attack" any of y'all this summer.
I see what you mean. However, it was at no point my intention to equate the severity of those two different contexts. But given your interpretation, I understand why you found it to be a ridiculous comparison. I just wanted to highlight that even seemingly harmless things can become a tool for harming someone regardless of the actual severity. Sorry if that wasn't clear enough before.
Given that this protest is performed by adults and not 5 year olds, and assuming that they are not shy about their hostility towards tourists, I would argue that the severity of such an confrontation can linger for a while with someone. I am absolutely sure that this would keep my mind busy for a while if it were to happen to me or those close to me. Therefore, I would rank this higher in terms of severity than a child being silly. (Of course it would be no match with being bullied.)
Maybe it's just me, but I didn't interpret the wording in such a dramatic manner like you did. I've seen it in a more general, abstract manner. Not in a way that would motivate me to call the police, no. Almost like the phrasing "verbal attack", which is also understood rather lightly. It seems this is why we've got into this misunderstanding. So thank you for clarifying this. :)
It sounds like the real problem isn't the actual tourists.
Who should I blame today for our problems, tourists or immigrants?
Choose one (and please ignore the capitalist elite actually causing these problems)
Screw these guys. Whatever your position on the matter it's not the tourists themselves who are culpable, but the national and local government for allowing their economy to be so reliant on tourism.
It doesn't justify assaulting and harassing people in the streets.
Barcelona is not the only city in the world that attracts a large number of tourists. Many cities attract more. Yet Barcelona is the only place I see with so many of these xenophobic nutjobs.
If the government is sitting on its hands then you can't blame them for doing something themselves. So I would blame the government for the protests and not the protesters. It's their home, not a theme park.
This justifies assaulting people how, exactly?
It was a peaceful protest from what I can see in the video and in the article text. By assault, are you talking about the tiny cheap water pistols the two girls were squirting?
Yes. Downplay it all you want but it's still assault. Especially when acid attacks are not unheard of.
Words aren't black and white things. The cashier not issuing a receipt is financial fraud but we're talking about gum; they dodged 5 cents in taxes.
I personally haven't heard of those one single time, but even if they were a thing every now and then, are we going to assume that anyone spraying a few ml of water might be throwing acid just bcuz? The point of these protests is to raise attention to the problem, not to harm tourists. If someone goes that "extra mile", throw them behind bars, this instead of assuming that the thousand others might be trying to seriously injuring someone when they're, very likely, doing something that goes away after 2 minutes in the local weather.
It is not a secret that a few cities across southern Europe very pissy about the treatment they're getting. I'm not into victim blaming, but it is strange to think of these tourists as surprised when they got confronted with some sort of protests or message of disdain. In Portugal those are all over the place. From graffiti to protests. And sure, most of those do not involve any sort of physical touch with the tourists, however, if I was a tourist I'd be way madder at some of the protests I see over here than over taking a minuscule spray of water and those you wouldn't qualify as "assault" only as "speech".
You are defending assaulting strangers who have done nothing.
The internet is wild.
Keep muttering that word. Whatever.
Their Rickshaws and boats are fucking the air as well. Can I also say I'm being assaulted? I'm objectively being harmed.
Plenty of people over here are considering way less nice things that spraying water. You have some actual assault going on in places (as in, punching tourists in the face) and vandalism to drive them off, but yeah, let's pretend that the 5ml of water are the real harm.
Knowingly going to a country suffering from overtourism? Going for AirBnbs instead of hotels? Blocking locals from being able to go to work because whatever route they pick looks scenic? Not bothering to learn like three words or whatever to be able to say hello or goodbye?
That's a "I'm going to throw 500kg of glass in the general bin" kind of done nothing. They know they're being asses to the locals. Is it legal? Yes. It is also legal not to recycle.
They're dehumanizing us because "they paid" but 30 seconds of slight moisture is the real crime.
The 200€ of flights (which has plenty of negative externalities), 100€ for the AirBnb (which not only was someone's eviction but also likely dodged taxes), 100€ for random food (which likely dodged taxes) and 100€ in some random tourist trap (which many times dodge taxes). Those crimes do not count because they were intermediated by someone else? The thousands who get trespassing tourists? The littered nature? No, those do not count; what really counts is the bloody water.
The bulk of the tourism money doesn't come from the 90% of clueless asses filling the streets. Comes from the rich ones. But if the law was such that it only allowed the rich to come it would also be bad. So, like I asked you before, what's the actual solution? Just pretending that nothing is happening?
And FYI, every single one of these countries has not-that-far-places that are more than pleased to see tourist activity. You have like ecovillages & such where you get to participate, appreciate nature and do rural tourism, all while enjoying the Mediterranean weather they came for. But no, people really must take the 1000000000th picture of the Sagrada Familia so that their travel-ego fills up. And yet you think that we should have empathy over that? Housing and jobs disappearing because random twats want to take pictures. Oh noes, the moisture. Right...
I'm not muttering it. It's literally assault.
"Knowingly going to a country suffering from over tourism" oh, please. None of those consequences you listed are any individual tourist's fault. If the government has failed to regulate these things that's on them.
In any case, do the protestors know all of the people they assaulted individually? I somehow doubt it.
Dress it up however you want, you are advocating for indiscriminate xenophobic assault and harassment.
The point I pointed is that the law draws a hard line but reality has no such hard lines. Some ok things fall beyond the line. Some not ok things fall outside. Some common sense helps with that but even that's cultural.
As for "literally assault"; I can read Spanish but heavy legalese is not something I want to bother with reading. I'm simply assuming that it is not all that different from whatever the law is in here, across the border. You don't have conventional "assault" in Portuguese law, you have "offenses to the physical integrity", which can be "simple", "aggravated" or "by negligence". The first two assume intent to physically harm; the last one assumed that you had no intent but were terribly negligent and that led to someone being hurt. (Thats Artigo 143.º if you're into Deepl-checking that)
So, I don't even think that spraying people in water would constitute "assault". Maybe "harassment", you do have that in legalese; however I do believe that harassment needs to be targeted (like to a very finite group of people, not to hundreds of people).
Then you have "disturbances to the public peace", but if that was to be enforced it would affect tourists waaaay more than protestors. This kind of law is generally not enforced in order to just let the tourists be drunk in the middle of the road however they want without facing consequences over it.
So, to begin with, I don't think that anyone here is committing a crime. Your notion of what is a crime is totally up to your society; my society can have a totally different notion.
As a "fun fact", we recently got pseudo-nazis doing public speeches over "claiming back Portugal" and telling everyone that looked tourist to fuck off. That was not only legal but protected and anyone that attempted to mess with these events would be the one committing a crime.
That kind of logic implies that nobody is responsible for pollution or lack of recycling but governments. You are obviously responsible for your actions. There might be some government shaping them but ideally your conscience would suffice.
For some things you need help from some entity because it is just too hard (like not rewarding companies that put lead in food; silly example but you get it) but simple things like "save water", "recycle", "be nice to whoever is nice to you", "let people exit transit before you go in" are pretty much left for consciousness.
You can decide your next vacation location based on consciousness or you can do so based on ego. "Oh man, Barcelona is cheap and looks sexy in my travel curriculum" is a condemnable attitude.
Like I already asked you plenty of times; how do you regulate that without plenty of side effects?
Travel tax? You'd be harming businesses as well.
Forbid local housing from being used? Already a limitation in place; but too late; not the licenses have already been issued. (PS: These are the license counts for inner Lisbon (emerald is regular housing used for tourists and blue is proper tourism estate): https://poligrafo.sapo.pt/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/4bcf1c68-a837-45ed-9f83-15c4ed12e549.png)
Have some mandatory prioritization of locals over foreigners? That would be xenophobic.
I've lived in both Portugal and Barcelona (for one month but it was a thing), in both cases before the tourism boom. The people in both places were everything but xenophobic; they both used to be very welcoming. The thing is not xenophobia as the attitude would be the exact same if the problem was to arise from the same country (if the numbers were enough).
You can't simply become homeless and jobless while staying welcoming; esp when, not all but plenty of, tourists treat us as inferior. They consider us to have less rights than they do because "they paid". That's a real rhetoric you get to experience.
Have these two recent reddit posts (deepl them) as a first hand experience that's not even trying to be xenophobic but cannot not be: Guy from Azores: https://www.reddit.com/r/portugal/comments/1dy6t3f/odeio_turistas/
Foreigner that was shocked at the fact that we look like a British colony: https://www.reddit.com/r/portugal/comments/1e1c4ky/why_albufeira_is_a_british_colony/
I admit I'm not familiar with Spanish law specifically. However I do have a legal background including a master's in international law and I'm fluent in Spanish. It appears that this very comfortably fits the definition for misdemeanor assault without injury, based on a quick skim. In any case, since you bring up common sense, I think common sense would suggest that spraying people with water who are minding their own business is something that would be prohibited in any country with a sensible legal system. And regardless, it clearly fits the common sense everyday usage of the word.
Personally, if this happened to me, as an ex police officer who worked in London where the threat of acid attacks are very real, I would in the first instance be quite concerned, especially given my PTSD. I think in any civilised, peaceful country a person should be able to mind their own business without being accosted and having water sprayed on them because they look foreign. That shouldn't be controversial.
As for your point on personal responsibility and your comparison with climate change - yes, I would apply the exact same logic there. It's the responsibility of the government to regulate the private sector to minimise environmental impact. I would equally criticise assaulting end consumers as a form of climate protest. Would you not? I assume your personal carbon footprint is 0 in that case.
How do I suggest the government do it? I don't know. That's not my field. It probably would have some consequences yes - the same can be said for almost any government policy on almost anything. It's not relevant to my point, which is that it's not the fault of someone who goes to another country as a tourist. What's YOUR suggestion? Ban tourists? Continue to target them with harassment until your country is so hostile in accosting foreigners that nobody wants to go there? That's really a place you'd want to live?
I was in Barcelona last November. I stayed in a hotel for a few days and visited a few sites, went to the theatre, and ate out at a few restaurants. I did that because I enjoy Spanish culture and Barcelona seems like an interesting place, and because I can. I deserved to be harassed and assaulted for that? Really? For visiting somewhere I find interesting, causing no harm to anyone, and spending money in local businesses?
I'm not saying the people of Spain as a whole are xenophobic. I'm saying that these groups who assault and harass people in the streets because they think they're foreigners are xenophobic. That is a xenophobic attack. And you are currently advocating for it.
I live in a coastal city and during the summer months it is PACKED with tourists from all kinds of countries. I get the annoyance. I experience it first hand. I empathise. But it does NOT warrant this kind of behaviour targeted towards people who are perceived as foreign. That's not how civilised societies do things. And I'm finding it a bit perplexing that you are simultaneously advocating for that while also talking about making decisions based on conscience.
I'm not advocating for that being ok when devoid of context. Just like pointing a megaphone at some institution devoid of context will get you detained (we don't do "US's" version of freedom here; a protest that is not properly communication beforehand is forbidden for public security reasons).
If we put up some context to it, we're talking about targeting a demographic which does plenty of also-not-ok things. Does this mean that blind mobbism is ok? Nope. However, given that there's zero enforcement on both sides, this mob attitude is in a way to balance things rather-harmlessly in this precarious sittuation.
If laws were to be thoroughly enforced, many tourists would also be in trouble (eg. for loud noise after dark) their prices would be substantially higher (as it is generally believed that there's plenty of tax evasion and illegal properties in the sector). This means that the gov could definitely be doing things better and enforcing laws better. It is partially our fault because we're used to live in a lax system (which was mostly ok until this...).
Talking to you was literally the first time I've heard of those. For some reason I don't get, London is unsafe. I hear about knifes and all kinds of shit in there but I don't see why that's the case. In the Iberian peninsula it is quite rare for anyone to assault you that way, even in proper robberies.
As a tourist you are the one doing the decisions. The "let's pick this 50€ Ryanair over that 300€ whatever to a place that's not massified" was a decision.
I advocate for lesser evils. In climate matters I think that forcing costumers to pay for externalities would do the trick. Albeit, plenty of people would argue that to be worse than getting sprayed with water. Suddenly that 50€ flight becomes a 2500€ flight and then local tourism becomes much more enticing.
If you put a flat tax, you harm business.
If you put a quota to it, you'd have the business of pretending that travelers are business people instead of tourists.
If you limit hosting to hotels, you'd get a tremendous market pressure for housing to go down to raise hotels (which is better than "local housing" for tourists as it is more efficient and doesn't fuck up with neighbors).
If you limit the amount of properties that can do so, you guarantee that no local is ever able to go anywhere else in their own country without a friend lending a sofa.
If you simply spam enough properties such that everyone fits, whenever the economy goes bad (/Covid) the country goes snap bankrupt.
As you can probably imagine, living in a country that suffers from this, I've heard plenty of debate. There's no perfect solution and the solutions that seem to be the closest to good are basically gentrification.
Showing tourists that they're not welcome is probably one of the actions that causes the lesser amount of harm (both to locals, businesses and tourists) as basically most other measures ensure that the best thing most people would be able to afford would be a few towns away from home.
It is negative. I was living a very modest job and fired myself to voluntarily work for the transportation sector (eg. find ways to make public transit more enticing). The things I started doing were good so I eventually got paid for them. The last time I touched a plane was in 2014, I don't eat meat and I very rarely buy clothes. For some reason, society has this weird idea that following your conscience means living miserably.
"Oh, but then how will I visit Mars 3 times a year?" You do not. Traveling for leisure is not a god given right. I bet that most people have fairly nice towns not that far from home, and if they do not, why not vote locally to create nice towns locally? Architecture was a concept that was murdered in the 60's but we can redo things with time.
The farthest I've went was literally Barcelona and my vacations start with the question "where can I get to by train in less than a day?". No government is forcing me not to be an asshole, I can behave without hard rules. This way, If I ever need to go to... say... to Norway, for some researchers conference or whatever, I can take a plane, knowing that it pollutes a lot, yet without an heavy conscience because it is a one off, not the semestral dose of planes and poverty incentives.
And you can say "man, that's just your opinion", but the fact was that before massification people saw consideration for others as something important. They had different ideas of what was wrong or right, yet except for the odd asshat, people had the "I'm not going to overfish this lake because other people might also want to fish" attitude. That opinion that "not being considerate is not wrong" is just silly to my ears and is precisely what is fucking up the planet.
And yet that's generally not the case. If I had to place a bet, a lot of people that come to Portugal don't even know that it is not Spain. My parents work in the mail service and you have plenty of mail addressed like "Lisbon, Spain". They couldn't give less of a fuck about the place, simply figured that it was cheap and checked travel bingo card on it.
Are there considerate tourists that actually do care for the place and want to be behaved? Plenty. But the ratios are completely fucked. If you talk to people that work in the tourism sector they will point out that they are very VERY tired of dealing with the asses. What's their percentage? I have zero clue and this is not something measurable, but I personally had plenty of encounters that didn't quite go the way society should go.
Last year the pope came here and with him a lot of followers. The fuckers had free transportation passes and yet had to break transportation barriers and block off locals because they were all too busy chanting.
That was at the time of my last vacation. I got myself in a train to Spain to miss that and the majority of people I do know did equivalent trips. That's how saturated the environment is. Every time a big wave comes (pope, sport's event, Taylor Swift), we simply move away because the city is otherwise going to become unlivable.
Good thing I mentioned Taylor Swift because that's a prime demo of tourism being an asshole factory. She came here a few months ago. She was mass attended by Americans. People figured tickets in Portugal to be cheaper than wherever they live so they just flew here. Fuck the environment or the Portuguese being able to attend anything where they live without having to pay a 300% premium, right?
I advocate for whatever the utilitarian solution is and I do understand the concept of people having feelings when a loved one becomes homeless.
If sending a few hundred tourists to space makes live muuuuch more bearable for millions, then do it.
If having hundreds of locals annoyed makes the lives of millions of tourists great and that leaves the coffers full such that the locals can be compensated, then great.
It doesn't always need to go against tourists. The problem with tourists is that the current balance is not utilitarian at all. Millions are being left without a country they call home in the name of some other millions being able to prop up their vacation ego. This is a big consequence in exchange for a small reward.
As I stated, I'm an utilitarian. I advocate for whatever maximizes the global happiness, sustainability et all. Someone getting a miserable life requires a lot of people getting very very happy to balance.
A good part of my interference to "water attacks" is because I don't see myself getting any more fired up over them than I would over people chanting "go away". The water part, for me, a someone without any PTSD, it like "ehh, ok". Might not be for other people, but that was not the way I guessed it. I did not imagine a world with acid attacks nor did imagine getting someone's ass to my face in public transit to be any less "assault" than being sprayed with droplets of water. I reckon that is is simply my perception.
Yes but you could raise awareness in different ways or complain in a different place.
Those tourists are already there. They aren’t gonna pack up and leave. Sure they are probably not going to recommend Barcelona to their friends in the future but that’s insignificant.
Those tourists can’t even vote in legislation that would fix it, because they don’t live there. So it’s literally barking at the wrong tree.
And for the record, I’m very much aware that protests are almost by definition annoying. I’m very much for all the climate protests even when they block roads and such.
They do and have. Why are y'all in here acting like the Catalonian activists aren't also running local campaigns against their regional and national governments?
It's a protest. Same thing as climate protestors blocking the roads, no the individual commuters are not responsible for climate change, but the blocking roads is an effective way to draw attention to the issue.
Protests need to be disruptive or they won't be effective. These tourists had their day/lunch ruined at worst, the protestors are fighting for affordable living in the city they live in and they clearly have found an effective way to protest.
So yeah no, I feel bad for the tourists but that's about it.
Climate protesters don't assault people who are just sitting down eating. It's not the same.
(I actually would criticise those climate groups for separate reasons but that's a different conversation).
Those tourists can’t even vote. With climate protests at least you are raising awareness in people that can have some change or make some pressure.
Yes protests need to be disruptive but spraying people in London would be just as effective as spraying tourists that are ALREADY in their city.
These specific tourists were not targetted to change their minds. It was done to spread awareness and get coverage in the international media that Barcelona has nad enough of tourists.
It worked. So it 's a successful protest.
I guess you are right that it created news but I doubt it will have the desired effect. One does not guarantee the other necessarily
If we only did things that have guaranteed outcomes, not much would get done.
Then you're not paying attention. Plenty of such protests-with-thousands in a few major places that were overwhelmed. Barcelona, Maiorca, Lisbon, Algarve, probably most of Greece, Italy, Southern France, etc...
It is not false that the government has blame, however, there's plenty of preverse incentive in here. Land prices skyrocketed and a lot of very well positioned individuals got very well in life.
At the end of the day, being a decent human being doesn't require laws. If you know you're competing with locals whose rents already are higher than their salaries, with their businesses that now can't support rents any longer and generally browsing fake-local-crap (and I assure you that most mass tourism is), then you're just making yourself unwelcome.
Even the "tourists are injecting money in the local economy" argument is in a good part bullshit. Ofc that some of it loops to everyone else, but the gains are generally very poorly distributed and many times negative as that money destroys homes and jobs.
If you go to some parts of Lisbon, you're not going to be able to hear one single word of Portuguese. Just yday I heard about a guy complaining that tourists attempted to forbid him from going into a waterfall near his home because... It ruins their photos and they waited in line to have them while the guy just "skipped the queue". Mass-tourists can't just figure that it is a country where people live and not a theme park, the "we paid to come here, we have rights" argument is heard plenty of times.
Nothing worse than hearing that self-entitled argument along with "you're not complaining when we use all our money here are ye????" Makes my blood boil.
Aren't you figuring that we'd rather not have that? That money is mostly not reaching anyone but landlords, restaurant owners and rickshaws. We get poorer with tourism money.
The jobs that pay us more than 860€ (the minimum salary) disappear with mass tourism because 1) land values get too expensive 2) a lot of highly qualified people just emigrated away after being unable to pay rent.
People who attended STEM fields know that the way to get proper jobs is to leave the country, which is bloody unfair because we used to have them. Instead of 3k/mo white-collar jobs we get 860€/mo whipping simulators dealing with entitled tourists.
Ofc that not every job disappeared but since the economy is highly uncompetitive with it's tourism focus, you get the worst possible scenario for everything else.
I'm going to guess you're using an empiric "you", because I was trying to agree with you! Everything you said is on point.
Sorry, how does any of this justify assaulting tourists?
I'm from London and now live in another tourist heavy city. It doesn't justify assaulting people.
It doesn't justify assaulting (albeit calling 3ml of water in the Mediterranean summer an assault is a bit of a stretch), but that was not the only thing you said. You were isolating Barcelona as a special case. I simply said that it is not isolated at all, that every popular region along the entire Mediterranean coast is suffering from the same.
London's situation is bad but 1) 6 times more population dilutes tourism way better 2) London's tourism is "going there, taking pictures, famous Harry Potter things, giant ferry wheel, bye" instead of "I like this weather and everything is cheap; I think I'll stay here for as long as my visa allows" 3) the richer you are the least affected you get as tourists can't compete with you all that easily 4) London has that other phenomena, which is not quite tourism, called mass immigration, and the last time I've heard about citizen actions towards the problem they were following the "we no longer want to participate in anything with out neighbors" path which is IMHO a bit more extreme than just being mad en masse with a relatively harmless protest.
From a political standpoint, Madrid is an oppressive mess. Catalonia is in the podium for the most productive region and this is killing it slowly (as it did with Portugal and parts of other countries). You can't quite say the same about London. In London you might end up living far from the city center but your economic woes do not come from the thousands of immigrants nor the tourists all around.
Barcelona DOES have a unique reputation for these anti-tourist groups. That's why I said Barcelona was unique. But it's NOT unique in hosting large numbers of tourists. Not even close.
The literal exact same thing happens in every other alike place. We have the same in Lisbon.
The pieces of information foreigners get do not necessarily match the local truths.
As an example: I do volunteering at a kind-of-food-bank. It is obviously free to do. However, if you try to look that up in the internet, every single result will lead you to the idea that you need to have a guide or whatever reason to pay in order to do volunteering in here. The English information is HIGHLY distorted to hit foreigners. It is 100% unreliable. Do not attempt to look up for things about southern European countries in English. Most things that can somehow be capitalized on are lies or deceptive.
Okay. Well I've been to plenty of capital and major cities in London and Barcelona is the only place I've ever seen anti tourist stuff around and heard about this in the media. Granted, I've not been to Lisbon.
Random tweet I just came across: https://x.com/Scaife51/status/1811403266531471842?t=4fdIaowFfaHmYv77no51LQ
That's this place: https://www.reddit.com/r/portugal/comments/1e1c4ky/why_albufeira_is_a_british_colony/
Can you realistically believe that one can live in there without being anti-tourist? That's NOT a one off. That's a very common occurrence in the south coast (both Portugal and Spain). It is not a major city or anything like that. Every city down there is currently like that.
I think it's fair to say that football hooliganism is not unique to any particular place, and is a specific and unique problem. I do find football hooligans a nightmare. Is that the same problem as we're discussing with general tourism? I would argue no. Football hooligans are horrible in their own countries too.
That's an absolutely perfect example of what I'm saying. Whose fault is that - the individual who goes to that place, or the local government for approving those businesses to set themselves up on that street? If I lived there I would be furious. Not with the tourist spending money there, but with government for enabling the situation.
I've travelled around Spain and Italy (not Portugal, though I would love to visit one day) and I completely agree that it's a shame when places are taken over by businesses that cater to tourists to the detriment of the authentic local culture. The first place that comes to mind for me is Amalfi in Italy, where this was by far the worst part about my visit there, despite it being an absolutely gorgeous part of the world.
Where we disagree is where the responsibility lies. I do not believe it's the fault of the individual tourist. Local and national governments absolutely have the ability to change the situation. Obviously they don't because tourism brings in so much money. I don't particularly see how accosting and blaming individuals who have come to visit achieves anything or places blame on the people whose literal job it is to regulate these things.
Yes, over-tourism and hooligans are disjoint problems. But if it is so cheap going to a place that you can just grab your fella drunkards and go you end up mixing them both in...weird ways.
Britain is not that rich anymore (and we aren't in 2011 anymore), however, during peak crisis (when the IMF rescued Portugal and almost had to do the same with Spain) we couldn't do much besides accepting anything that was bringing money, no matter how little. For some reason, the brits got used to to go to Algarve as "their" vaction spot, so much that this predates the tourist boom, and at this point in time they just straight up bought everything. You can't say no when your country is near bankrupt.
The 2008 financial crisis was a major turning point for this massified tourism. The "lazy southern people that don't want to work" had to accept any money that tourists could bring and accept any consequences. Partly due to this, there's this culture that tourists are immune to everything. If you think that hooligans are bad in a place with functioning cops, imagine them in a place that, at most, says "please don't do that" and lets you go, every single time. Even the Germans, which generally are strict rule followers, stop having any regard for simple laws.
That very same "lazy southern people that don't want to work" stereotype also got many people considering the northern Europeans to be entitled assholes. Not individually. There's not all that much xenophobia when dealing with individuals 1:1, but when considering them as a group of people, there's a lot of resentment. Germany, the UK and France being in crisis and facing the same problems we faced is giving some sweet sensation to a lot of people.
There's also the cultural idea that "when you're not in your town, you behave", even internally. People from Oporto have the same prejudice towards Lisbon people. "They come here and act like this is their place, chanting and whatever, twats" goes Portuguese to Portuguese, no need to add foreigners for that attitude to be a thing.
There's enough context to everything to write quite a few books. Nothing in these interactions are as simple as "people are annoyed at competition in their markets so they're pointing water guns".
There was the time period I just described where the governments could not have a say towards that + tragedy of commons. Every local government wants to have "the best behaved and richest tourists" so a race to the bottom it goes. Now it is a complete mess to fix the situation, especially since the Portuguese no longer own those places.
As a local government you can't go against the majority of your people, and the majority of people in Algarve are Brits and French. They own entire regions. Years and years of this environment cause that. Even in the Lisbon region, plenty of tourists buy properties because "wow, such nice weather, everything cheap", which they end up treating as investment because why wouldn't them?
There was this particularly damning "golden visa" scheme during the IMF days where you'd get Portuguese citizenship and a myriad of rights if you invested 250k (?) in real estate. A whole lot of people started doing investment tourism due to that and they're totally capitalizing on that.
The way I see it, there are two major classes of tourist in here. The rich fellas which bought the entire property market, with the richest of them tanking our water supplies with their golf courts and lobbying against any changes. And the bingo-card tourist which sees "50€ on Ryanair, nice! Honey, let's go to Portugal, it is a place in Spain that has some pubs just like home". You have a few other classes like the guys that actually enjoy discovering cultures and whatnot, but my personal experience tells me that there aren't all that many like that even though all of them will say that they're doing just that.
Now, none of this wall of text pointed at "firing water at people" as a solution; it just pointed a good deal of the context why other solutions are near impossible. However, in a way dissimilar to Portugal, Catalonia actually is a powerhouse. They can actually just limit the amount of people going there and succeed that way. But 1) business travellers are barely distinguishable from tourists 2) Madrid is a pain.
The whole point is that this is a very hard to solve mess. Most people don't know these details; they merely know that we have a "too many tourists; go away" attitude; they could be halfway decent and just respect it, unless they have some particular interest in the country. There's a trivial way to distinguish. We actually love to see people trying to speak Portuguese; even if they utterly fail; because this is enough to distinguish them from the 99%. This is how desperate we are for people that actually value anything in Portugal but the pictures and weather.
I'll just start by saying I found your comment very interesting and insightful and I've learned a lot about the local challenges so thank you for taking the time to educate me. I still stand by my core argument but I appreciate your account and it was an interesting read.
What I would add is that I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of judging all tourists by the loud ones. The vast majority are just trying to get some time away and enjoy some time abroad and do so respectfully. I'd respectfully disagree that they're the minority. Yeah, certain places get more tourists because the flights are cheap. Well, times are tough and I think less well-off people also deserve a holiday. It's not really their fault if some places are more affordable than others.
Vacant holiday homes is a massive problem here as well, especially in regions like Cornwall and the Lake District. And also London, where the ultra wealthy of the world essentially use the city as a bank account to store their wealth. Personally I'm in favour of taxing the hell out them to disincentivise the practice and bring down house prices for genuine residents and families. But much like the tourism situation we've been discussing, it's such a huge source of income for the country that I don't envision this really happening. As much as I'd like it to.
It's the job of politicians to resolve the systemic issues (though I don't pretend to know how). If they don't have a strong enough mandate to do so then, well, that's democracy isn't it? I say this as someone who about a week ago won the first vote of their adult voting life after a decade and a half living under a conservative government who I can't stand. By all means campaign and protest to support your cause for the next vote, but I continue to condemn the type of protest shown in the original post. I don't think it's right to form a mob around perceived-foreigners, chant at them and spray water at them - which is my core point I wanted to originally make.
Then you've never interacted with the locals in these other places. Having grown up in a vacation town, I can tell you right now that the only difference here is that the people with water guns have hit their breaking points.
Have you ever seen the movie Jaws? There's a small throwaway bit in there where the wife of the chief of police is asking a friend of hers when she gets to be an islander (because the family had recently moved to the island from New York), and her friend responds, "Never. If you weren't born here, then you're not an islander." Having grown up near where that movie was made, that's 100% accurate to the local sentiment. On that island, they call people who move there "wash ashores" because they feel that they washed up like the flotsam and jetsam on the beach. In my town, we called the rich people who would come up to vacation in their lavish summer homes "snowbirds" because they migrated at the same time as the birds and couldn't handle the winter weather.
The most consistent thing I've found about tourist areas is the negative impact the industry has on the area for locals and the hatred locals feel towards the tourists.
Whether these people are acting rightly or wrongly, they're trying to hit the government and businesses where it hurts most - their profits - because it's the only way they'll ever care about the local problems.
Honestly - I'm quite a well travelled person and Barcelona is absolutely notorious for these groups. They are famous for it. So I stand by what I said. I'm from London and now live in a tourist heavy seaside town. I get it. But it doesn't justify assaulting people.
The greedy local businesses and the local government letting them keep their probably ridiculous profits is the problem here.
We have a similar problem where I live... It became a rich person vacation spot like 15 years ago and now they're ruining the town... They buy up the shops, but gut them from being geared towards those that live here to just throw away vacation trinket shops and stupidly overpriced restaurants that all close from fall to spring. They buy all the available housing so they can spend two fucking weeks a year in the house...
I can absolutely empathize with these people. At least here, these rich fucking tourists are literal locusts. No one but themselves benefit: they made a closed system that their money circulates in and all the working people have to leave which ALSO benefits the wealthy as their homes become available to buy... Of course too expensive for us to afford, but what's $1+million for a 2 week vacation spot for an obscenely wealthy person...
Squirting people with water in the middle of summer is a punishment? Aim it right at my face, protesters.
Especially if it's as been as hot in Barcelona as it's been here in North America. It's been ridiculous.
I don’t even know if they are right or wrong about this, but I stand 1,000% in favor of people getting out in the streets with their water pistols and being the change they want to see in the world
Fuck ‘em up boys, fuck ‘em up. Get those tourists the fuck outta here like a buncha cats that went on the counter.
I agree. The world would be a better place if more people with grievances used water pistols and fewer used the kind that fire bullets.
Squid, wtf? You’re a mod and this is a direct response to you, TCB son TCB
Huh?
https://leminal.space/comment/9278309
A removed comment that I didn't remove? I'm still not understanding.
It’s still showing on my side. My bad, I was going for lighthearted with the TCB.
I figured you already had them personally blocked and hadn’t seen it.
That’s why I reported it as well.
😊
No worries. I was very confused. Thanks.
I think they are wondering why you, as a mod, didn't remove the extremely distasteful reply that the leminal.space instance user made. I think they may think mods are more powerful than they are.
You could be right. For the record, it was simply because I wasn't around between the time it was posted and the time it was removed.
I'm going to Barcelona this week on a family trip. We're staying in an AirBnb for a day. I think they've got a legitimate cause to spray people like me, who pretty much across the board don't realize how much their privilege hurts regular working people.
Take a hotel next time. AirBNB is cancer to citizens looking for an appartement.
I didn't plan the trip myself, and I think there was some reason or another they chose AirBNB instead of a hotel. But yeah, if I ever do a trip like this again (unlikely), fuck an AirBNB
Sorry, I didn't try to put shade on you, as you clearly aren't senseless to the situation, I was just going to point out what the actual issue is with tourists.
No no you're good, I didn't take it that way. I think saying "next time" instead of "you should have" is a good way to help people realize that what they are doing might be destructive, without condemning them to the eternal pits of hell, so I appreciate you saying it that way.
Just say "we cheaped out" ffs
I wasn't sure whether hotels had already been booked or whether they cheaped out, that's why I worded it like that. Could be.
Well, don't go then, solves everyone's problems if that's how you feel...
Would you cancel a trip with your family that was already booked, that your mom completely planned out each activity in depth, that you already paid for, that you've been looking forward to, collectively, for over a year, because you found out you'd be contributing to a systemic problem for a
weekday?You just might be a better person than me, at the end of the day.
Yes, if I felt strongly about I would, but I don't.
And they have no right to throw water at you, so quit apologizing for yourself.
What is the temperature in Barcelona right now? I would imagine getting hit with a water gun would feel pretty nice on a hot day of walking around doing touristy stuff.
I can understand the residents and where they're coming from, but protesting against the tourists themselves, people who have already made the trip and are there for a week or two before they fuck off home and who probably don't care and definitely have no control over local politics, rather than against the local owning class making all of the money off of the tourists and who encourage them to keep coming, and the authorities that they pay to enable them, seems like completely missing the point.
I feel like you're missing the point. It's a protest, and they found an effective way to make their point. These tourists had their day ruined at worst, they'll get over it.
No, it's definitely you who are missing the point.
I don't feel bad for the tourists, I feel bad for the protestors, because they're wasting their time.
Because the people they need to be protesting don't give a shit about tourists getting wet either, they've already been paid for these tourists' visit, and millions more to come - because this isn't going to stop any future tourists either, precisely because being shot at with a water pistol is not a big deal.
This protest is having zero impact on the people the protestors need it to have an impact on, making it wholly ineffective.
Eh, I'd love to visit Barcelona, but I won't until they figure out how to make tourism work without causing the city to be unlivable for locals.
I wish I knew how to be a better tourist, too. I've seen similar feedback from other cities, including my own. Tourism and prioritizing tourism isn't good for locals in many ways.
Good for you (sincerely), but it wasn't the water pistols that led you to that conclusion, was it?
Absolutely, but until the negative impacts hit those raking in all the money, and not just the working class people on the front lines dealing with the consequences, nothing will change. Which again, is why the protestors targeting the tourists, and not those profiting from them, is ineffective.
As for being a better tourist, I'm no authority, especially since I've not been one for many years, but reading up on local attitudes and complaints about tourists would probably be a good place to start and learn what to avoid, and go from there..
I've actually heard several times over the last few years that Barcelona is unfriendly towards tourists, and then there's the recent news that they will ban short-term rentals in 2028 and that multiple groups were involved in the water gun stunt... So no, it's not just the water guns, but it takes a lot for news from Spain to reach me in the States. The water guns were actually a moderately effective means of telling me that tourism is an issue in the city, and that people are angry about it.
I can't say that my individual thoughts and actions are common, but I'm not unique in this world either. Many cities are expressing frustration at the results of tourism, and through various means locals are making themselves known. I do think it does some amount of good for the protestors to organize via actions, both for the strength of the local movement, as well as in creating awareness of issues. I'm not sure what else they're looking for past the ban, though I'm sure they have as many existential crises through capitalism as the rest of the world. Other desires and critiques haven't made it across the Atlantic to me yet.
They do campaign against their governments. They've now gotten international news coverage for confronting tourists, an action that could cause many to pause when considering visiting the city. The people who run the city will notice that and so will potential future tourists.
Sounds like it could be potentially impactful to me.
They already had loads of international news coverage for the airbnb ban, and I guarantee they would have gotten significantly more had they, again, simply targeted the people responsible, rather than those who have zero power to do anything abut it (because again - they aren't even just random locals, they are people who having already paid for their time there and contributed to the problem, and who are unlikely to return, not regularly anyway, and have zero impact on local politics).
Getting you to notice isn't impact, you are irrelevant to the people who have the power over their situation.
The people who have power will care if tourism dropped because tourists are made literally uncomfortable by local protests and that becomes known to potential travelers
I live in a tourism-dependent city and the main problem isn’t tourists as much as AirBnB and similar services fucking up residential neighborhoods, raising rents, etc. And even then, it’s not the original AirBnB concept (of renting your place or spare bedroom out) as much as investors (often institutional investors) buying up dozens of properties and acting as unlicensed, less regulated hoteliers.
I’d be fine with AirBnB if they voluntarily limited that sort of shit or were forced to do it via strong regulations or punitive taxes. We have some OKish regulations. There’s permits and restrictions on density — one per block in residential areas, basically — but lobbyists got involved so half the regulations are about protecting the hotel industry instead of protecting the limited housing stock. And it all relies on AirBnB enforcing the rules when they have the opposite incentive.
Tourism is 5% of Spains GDP.
Have fun with that.
Which means nothing when it only creates poor paying jobs and pushes everyone out of their cities lol. Most of the money generated by tourism doesnt reach the working class pockets while it clearly makes their quality of life worse. Mass unregulated tourism only helps the wealthy.
It’s not a tourism problem, it’s a regulation problem then… I like the protest and everything but it just feels funny .
Well have fun "regulating" capitalism away.
I mean they mostly want to get rid of airbnbs, which I think it’s also not fair but that’s Barcelonas main problem. I’d say there should be some zoning rules or limits regarding them. But bans would also just prompt to ways of getting around those bans. I am not a big fan of “blame the system” when it’s people setting up airbnbs as it is more cost effective for them than regular renting. We need to self regulate ourselves somehow — give us another economic or political system, and the same inequalities and abuses will show up, I have not much proof but also no doubt . The system is not the problem, greed is, and it’s not capitalism-induced greed , it’s part of human nature.
I'm always very confused by comments like this.
You say
Like, bro, what makes one option more cost-effective than another option? What do you call the set of rules, regulations, the set of institutions that create them and the set of relations and norms that govern the dependencies between the parts of society that end up creating this or that incentive structure? Because in my vocabulary, the easiest way to describe this concept is ...a system.
This is such a meaningless statement. Humans operate within societies. Societies impose incentive structures and set up institutions that make certain activities easy and others hard. Certain behaviours are societally penalized, others are rewarded. It's the same species of humans that lives in countries with a lot of corruption and in countries without very little corruption for example. Same human nature here and there, but different outcomes. Changing, improving, reforming, replacing the system is a very meaningful discourse to have. It's literally what democratic politics is supposed to be about: how a citizenry decides what the common polity is to be.
Talking about Barcelonas and most cities’ gentrification problem, it’s not capitalism is what I meant for “blaming the system”. Then the other was regarding “regulation”. The incentive could be elsewhere instead, e.g. let BCN be a tourism whorehouse and improve the QOL in the suburbs, connect them with trains, shift big tech companies to relocate with tax benefits etc . It’s not a tourism problem its an everybody wants to be in the same city problem. Just expand what makes BCN amazing outwards . Transport , bike lanes , wide roads and urban planning . It’s like, they made one great plan and they forgot to iterate on it for the current time, and expand it properly. I don’t feel it’s fair to use capitalism as a sort of “swear word” freely . Like you state the problem can be attacked from a lot of angles and it’s not a “capitalism” problem but the sum of relations and norms , wants and needs. If all cities were “not capitalist” there would still be some more coveted than others and that would create a housing problem anyway.
Rampant, unfettered capitalism exponentially enhances greed as more people gain unlimited wealth.
The way to limit greed is to have laws in place that limit capitalism. Unfortunately many of those laws we used to have were dismantled during the trickle-down era of Reagan and Thatcher.
Really it's just greed. Every system of government has the same fundamental flaw, it consolidates power, and creates an oligarchy. The solution is the same one we've been using, strong worker protections, regulations on corporations, and a constant reinforcement of the social safety net.
Our system is perpetually falling into oligarchy. It's our (and our representatives) job to ensure that we're regularly propping it back up with heavy investment into the populations welfare.
Big brain move. The money that’s generated from tourism doesn’t trickle down to the people so instead of going after the rich that control the tourism industry and using unions to lift up their wages they would rather go after the same class of people as them because they’re angry at a system that was designed to make them mad at the tourists rather than those profiting directly from it.
I’m all for demanding more of a cut of the pie, and being upset about the city not building housing meant for the people that live there, but this is just plain wrong.
Lmao, massified tourism cant be sustained anywhere, even in zones where the average citizen is wealthier than in Barcelona its starting to get regulated.
What is plain wrong is to talk out of your ass about a matter you dont even start to understand.
Barcelona city should have the highest gdp/capita in Spain, even out-ranking Madrid. Metro area isn't as extreme but overall Catalonia is still rich.
Consider it more like trying to turn NYC into a tourist resort.
I wasnt talking about richer cities than Barcelona inside spain, altough the numbers are skewed due to having very rich zones at the same time they have very poor neighborhoods. I was talking about the rest of the world in zones that are already regulating tourism, as in New York, Venezia etc
It just keeps showing that mass tourism cant be sustained and never benefits the working class, people that is against regulating tourism dont really know what they are talking about.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/venice-introduces-five-euro-tourist-153408391.html
https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2023-10-04/after-new-york-placed-limits-on-airbnb-are-we-witnessing-the-end-of-a-model.html
Define "mass tourism". If we're simply going by tourists per capita, or better tourist-days per capita, there's plenty of places with very high numbers that are doing well -- but those aren't cities, much less vibrant ones. They're things like mountain villages with ski resorts, with a couple of original farms offering a couple of rooms, a few smaller hotels dotted throughout, plenty of seasonal workers and when the season is over the whole villages resumes to what it has done for millennia: Subsistence agriculture. Maybe some forestry, and there's also a sawmill. At a way higher living standards than would be possible by exporting cheese or whatnot.
...not speaking about extreme places like Davos, though, nothing is normal or typical about that place. They're also more than rich enough to afford public housing and democratic enough to actually build it, YMMV in otherwise comparable places.
What basically never works out economics-wise is all-inclusive resorts: Those are generally built by outside investors, capitals thus flowing out of the local area, they may pay the local residents well in season but out of season they're out of work and local non-tourist industry has to deal with not being able to afford workers in season. Some may be able to adapt but you can't just shut down most factories, physically and/or because you need that operation time to pay back your loans. Thus the local industry gets killed off, or can't develop in the first place. Not going to happen in that mountain village because it never had the chance to develop anything serious in the first place, geography and all.
Oh, other example: Wacken. Just over 2000 inhabitants, maybe 6k taking surrounding municipalities into account, each year visited by 80-100k pilgrims. About 10% of the inhabitants flee during the festival, the rest is hustling. It's short enough to not disturb the local economy yet brings in tons of money.
Before i reply i really would need to know if you are even joking, i get that its a trend on lemmy, going rondabouts in a discussion completely losing the point of the argument in a long post instead of replying to what the other user said, but to have to read arguments about tourism outside major cities in things like ski resorts and small villages when the thread is about Barcelona (and the metropolitan area around it) and im bringing examples about what other major cities are doing just seems like trolling at this point by your part.
The metropolitan area of Barcelona has 5,3 million population, im sure an example of a random village with 2k people applies. By the way, a big part of tourism in BCN is already on the edges of the metropolitan area on illegal, or at least gray, airBnbs.
Go on again about tourism on villages in specific seasons and agriculture? Just lol.
Anyway, have a good day mate.
I mean it was you who started making claims about mass tourism in general, not specifically mass tourism in cities.
If all those tourists would pack up and flock to Extremadura I bet the locals would be very welcoming, not much more than agriculture and power generation there, economy-wise.
The only mass tourism outside cities is Disney world. Only cities are big enough for mass tourism
That's why I asked you to define mass tourism, and gave my own definition. Which definitely fits more with how I see the word used elsewhere, e.g. one commonly given example is Hallstadt: Population 787, up to 30k tourists per day.
Oh I forgot you’re a specialist in city planning, urban development and hospitality.
Cities and countries rely on a variety of sources of income and taxes to sustain a quality of life. Understanding that one is still needed while recognizing we can do more to improve the lives of others isn’t talking out of my ass. It’s common sense knowledge. I live close to the Bay Area and frequent tourist areas because of my line of work and recognize that they get populated by people as seasons fluctuate. It’s frustrating, but that’s part of running a successful city. Keeping a vibrant life for people and enticing them to come visit. If Barcelona is just meant to provide only housing for its citizens it becomes another American style suburb instead of what makes Barcelona a cool attraction and lucrative destination.
It does create jobs though. Think of all the small restaurants and shops and your guides in these areas. This provides real people and income that they go on to spend at other businesses in an area.
This is why places advertise for people to come, it boosts the economy.
They didn't say that it doesn't create jobs. They said that it creates poor paying jobs. Which it does. All those restaurants and shops and guides are low wage jobs, and often, only seasonal jobs as well.
In the vacation town I grew up in, up to 50% of businesses were closed 8 months out of the year. In these kinds of areas, tourism isn't a boost to the economy. It is the economy. It eats it up until there's almost nothing left. Any industry that doesn't serve the tourism is pushed out by the high profit margins of only being open long enough to service the seasonal tourism. I used to work at a fish market in that town that stayed open all year, and outside the tourist season, the boss reduced the hours to half of what they were during the tourist season. Because he couldn't afford to keep the business running full-time. The store ran at a loss 8 months out of the year, and the busiest day of the tourist season largely kept the place open the rest of the year. It would've been more profitable for him to close down, but he stayed open because he didn't want his local customers and employees to go somewhere else.
Most of the towns in that county are tourist towns, and that county has the highest rates of drug addiction in the state and huge homelessness problems. Because there's very little to do most of the year since everything is closed, and combine the seasonal labor/low wage tourism industry with the housing stock being bought up by wealthy people for their vacation homes or Air BnBs while apartments prioritize short-term seasonal rentals because of how much more they can charge, and locals can't afford to live in town anymore. There's one town there that has a year-round population of 2,000 and can see up to 60,000 people there in the summer. And anybody I've ever talked to who has lived in a vacation town has cited the exact same issues consistently - high rates of poverty, homelessness, and drug use/addiction.
Oh yeah, a job that pays less than what costs just the rent everywhere in a 3 hour radious of where that job is. Really useful to anyone that is fine with living below a bridge.
Most of which is the Balearic isles (40% of local GDP), Canaries (32%), and similar. Barcelona has a way higher GDP/capita than the Spanish average, for the city at large tourism income is pretty much peanuts at ludicrous social cost. Every single employee there to do nothing but wipe tourist asses is lowering GDP, displacing a supercomputer researcher or whatnot.
If you really want to see the Sagrada Familia or generally are a Gaudi fan fine, it really is the best place to visit for that purpose, otherwise, just go somewhere where your money is actually appreciated. Like, visit Extremadura. Poorest region in Spain, 4.3% of GDP is tourism, rest pretty much agriculture and power generation. Very good cuisine. Very dry heat as you might have guessed from the name.
Tbh, that's much lower than I expected. They'll probably be fine.
Lots of butthurt entitlement ITT.
Haha yeah I was about to say, this is a masterpiece of
*newspaper jumping on the absolutely least significant aspect of smth, just, and really for no other fucking reason, because it activates low stakes unambiguous morals
*everyone: preaching low stakes morals
Wel played everyone, you've won the simulator. Turns out you do have a message, you do tell the truth
FIRE WATER
SpongeBob physics
The lady in the thumbnail looks like Sarah Connor.
Spain has adopted Thailand's Songkran and made their own spin on it.
Sounds like fun.
Your protest should not harm or target individual people, even if that "harm" is a mere annoyance.
Sounds like a great rule to implement if your goal is completely ineffective protests.
Consent is key. Even if it's a toy, touching/interacting/trapping someone in public is not cool.
If your protest doesn't maintain consent, it's a mob.
If your protest isn't inconvenient it's going to be ignored.
Inconvenience isn't what I called out.
Taking a space and making your voice heard is great. Surrounding and touching certain individuals is not. It lacks consent.
Edit as another critical point why this behavior isn't ok:
In this case, it just so happens they are "targeting" tourists. What if it was far right extremists "targeting" immigrants? Even if they did the exact same thing (squirt guns), that would obviously be inappropriate. My point in this second paragraph is that encouraging or normalizing mob like behavior is not ok, because someday it may be used for a more dangerous or hateful topic.
Nazis don't give a shit what people think is acceptable. That comes with the territory. I know you think you're being kind by saying protests need to be sterile and out of the way but all you're really doing is helping rich people keep them ineffective. How's that been going for the last 50 years?
Ignoring consent is not something I'll agree with. Edit it's literally always wrong.
Targeting individuals is always wrong, even with a toy.
The point is if you normalize mob behavior, when the "Nazis" come they'll be operating within the space you built. "What bro, I'm just protesting by surrounding this immigrant family and harassing them"
I never said sterile. I never said out of the way. I said don't trap, don't touch, don't harass individuals.
Respect individual consent. Protest systems, not individuals, because that is mob behavior.
Yes you never said sterile but that's still the kind of protest you're describing. To avoid any further semantic confusion let's try a different approach, why don't you describe what your ideal protest to deal with this tourism issue, or any other issue, looks like? Where does it take place and what kind of action occurs during it?
Any protest that does not threaten, harass, entrap, or otherwise victimize individuals. No vigilante justice, no "stick it to em", no risk to health or safety.
If you can't agree to that, there's no point in me describing a protest I agree with, because we arent getting off the starting line.
Edit consent is not "semantics" what the fuck
People can spin any action you choose to fit that definition and by extension deny your right to protest. That's the point. If you don't see that then you're right, there's no reason to continue this conversation.
Untrue. Peaceful, but meaningful protest is absolutely possible without endangering bystanders or denying personal autonomy and consent.
The alternative is just mob justice by your own personal flavor. Pray another group never identifies you as their target.
If that's true then it should be easy to identify what a productive protest that follows your guidelines would look like and provide a real world example of it. You declined to do that when asked.
When did locals consent to have their city taken over?
When the purchasing power disparity is too big, you create this imbalance where you can't just refuse them while at the same time you know that long term it fucks everything up badly.
Businesses will accept them given that they can now charge triple rate for everything. Politicians get extra tax revenue and benefit from bits of corruption here and there. Meanwhile the commoner has to figure another place to live.
The entire south of Portugal (so, not all that far from Barcelona) is now devoid of locals. If you go there in the winter you get to see almost-empty-towns that used to be major cities. Everyone moved to Lisbon. And now that Lisbon also happens to have grown to be an hot spot as well? You guessed it, people mass moving as well, this time for another countries.
A few years back, our PM literally told us to emigrate; that's how bad things got in here.
As for political parties that "want" to "solve this", it is basically a single party show; the far right.
Classic. You're applying systemic issues onto the individual. It wasn't "taken over". Private property was used for business means. (Tourism). That's an issue between landowners and the state, not between 2 (or more) random people on the street. Everyone in that system consented. The tourists are there legally, and should not be the victim of mob practices.
Always maintain the consent and autonomy of others. Simple stuff.
Plenty of movements went on due to public pressure through protests. iIRC the Dutch pro-livable cities movement started that way, with protests against cars, half a century ago.
Also, you're giving to tourists a right while stripping it from ourselves. You forget that in a crowd you're going to have some that are going to break into private property, halt streets and do all kinds of dumb shit in the name of an Instagram picture.
Touristing and handling garbage can be seen the same way. You can think a bit about what bin to use and that takes some extra effort or you can just throw everything in the general because it is easier.
You're touristing in another countries for like 1 week a year. That means that the ratio of time you're touristing to the time you're not is like 53:1, assuming that everyone does the same (which is def not the case). So, a perfectly balanced town in this hypothetical reality has 1 person touristing for each 53 not doing it. In some parts of these cities the opposite happens. It is so massive that you get many times more tourists than locals and that is enough to get everything malfunctioning.
Barcelona just had to remove bus lines from Google Maps to let locals have a chance to ride them. How is this fair? And this is the authorities doing something as you just advocated for. They got called out for that as xenophobic and whatnot. So, tell me, if I live in a place with a nice environment, how to I go to work? And how do I keep a house and a job given the rent increases sponsored by the millions that want to prop up their Instagram? If we can't forbid them from coming, what exactly should we do that is not going to be called xenophobic? Tax it to reduce their numbers? That's also condemned by plenty as gentrification. What is the good solution exactly?
Again, sounds rough. Barcelona should change.
But individuals do not deserve to be trapped or harassed for doing something legal.
The issue lies solely between residents, property owners and the government.
Don't target individuals.
Use some critical thinking, Im not defending unlimited tourism. I'm not discussing the situation in Barcelona at all really. I'm talking about the fundamentals of ethical protest. If your point requires you to abuse individuals, you aren't protesting, you're a mob.
If "you" so casually ignore consent and bodily autonomy in public, what's happening in private?
There are plenty of legal things that are condemnable.
Going to a place that you know upfront that is suffering like this, where you know that you're contributing a teeny bitsy to get someone homeless, jobless and cultureless might be legal but it isn't moral.
One might argue that most tourists do not know that. They simply look up some "top 17 best places to go in summer 2024" and off they go. They think that they are going to ride in a lovely tram through lovely streets and then some paradisiac beach when reality is smelling sweaty butts through crowds all the way.
But how to you convince dumb tourists to be smart and moral tourists when there are plenty of good places they can go to that aren't overcrowding (even in these same countries)? I personally dunno. And since you think that individuals should not be concerned then you probably prefer some other route.
We can have quotas, but then you get gentrification. Whoever is the richest gets in and the others do not.That's also terrible. Plus you'd get a black market with illegal renting due to market pressures.
What solution do you propose exactly?
I propose not targeting individuals with a mob.
I propose turning that group back from a mob, into a protest, and getting in the government's face.
Like, the tourists walked into a door marked: "free candy, please come in. Yes, you!", then once through, are told "how dare you, we have so little candy for ourselves". They can't undo that they walked through the door. They were invited through. The folks inside should instead take the issue up with whoever put the sign on the door, and work to take that down.
Has happened, hundreds of times. Zero effect. Governments couldn't love anything more but free money that comes independently of the well being of their citizens. Dutch disease 2.0. Plus, the Madrid government isn't exactly known for attending Catalonia's needs. For some reason they tried to declare independence 9999 times in these last decades.
Well, having a reputation for being annoying towards tourists is a sign by itself. And put yourself in the shoes of those fellas. What can they realistically do if the democratic process doesn't cut? Should they just abandon their land?
What they can't (shouldn't ) do is popularize mob justice by harassing (legally) innocent people.
And what I asked you was what they should do instead given that Catalonia will always be a minority.
The last minority in Spain that was veeeeery unhappy started a diplomat space program. Is that the way?
I also pointed out that this pacific-ish way of manifestation (cmon, this is not hard assaulting; more like attention grabbing) has done wonders for some movements in the past. Modern Netherlands were reborn out of people roadblocking "innocent people trying to go to work or trying to enjoy their off days" with bicycle protests.
Fuck Spain and their air conditioning rules too.
My personal experiences of this have been being yelled "Go home, tourist!" when I make innevitable driving mistakes in a rental car, while in an area that clearly needs all the tourism money it can get.
People new to or unfamiliar with their "home town" often don't realise tourism is part of the backbone they enjoy, even if a muscle gets pulled now and again.
You mean to tell me you DON'T want people to visit your beautiful city? Then why did you make it so beautiful in the first place? Attracting tourists is an inevitable side effect of that. Just treat them nicely, and they'll treat you back nicely.
Though now I wanna visit Barcelona just to be sprayed with a water gun, it sounds so fun. Just please ask people for consent if you wanna do that.
Imagine thinking the only reason your city should be a beautiful place to be is so that tourists can enjoy it.
That's probably a good point.
Most "beautiful" bits people visit are at least a century old, plenty of them like 5+ centuries old. I don't think that people back then were considering tourists.
I'm either case, weather and natural features play a big role for southern Europe. We didn't decide to have these.
Also, IIRC, we also didn't ask half of Europe to unbuild itself in this last century. WW2, cities for cars and fucking up nature were not decisions we had a say on.
It is silly AF to have a German/Brit/French/American/Chinese fuck their country up trough some industrialization and pro-productivity-but-anti-quality-of-life policies, get rich doing it and then proceed to go to a country that has opted to stay out if it to enjoy what they could have at home but decided not to.
That actually makes sense. I really was saying nonsense.
Italy had a bit of a say in it...