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).
Spain has adopted Thailand’s Songkran and made their own spin on it.
However, the Assemblea de Barris pel Decreixement Turístic says that these visitors increase prices and put pressure on public services, while profits from the tourism industry are unfairly distributed and increase social inequality.
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…
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.
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?
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?
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.
Then why did you make it so beautiful in the first place
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…
FIRE WATER
SpongeBob physics
Fuck Spain and their air conditioning rules too.
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.
It’s also quite likely the majority was not born in Barcelona
I don’t think that’s relevant at all. Residents of Barcelona should still not be pushed out by BnBs.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
Interesting. Valid points…
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.
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.
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.
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’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
I think there was some reason
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Squid, wtf? You’re a mod and this is a direct response to you, TCB son TCB
Huh?
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.
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.
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.
Attacking tourists is not exactly a solution and will just fuck their economy up even more.
Attacking tourists
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
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.
It’s totally harmless and works to grab the media attention.
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:
“…that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ ”
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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Wat? Does you geography?
Barcelona is in Catalonia its the part of Spain directly across the Pyrenees from Perpignan.
Are you thinking of Cadiz? (You’re still wrong) Or Tangier? Marrakech? Fez? Casablanca?
And why do you think nobody cares about Morocco?
I think they’re trying to be racist.
That’s quite possible but if they are they’re failing even at doing that properly. Damn, the class of bigot we get today are just so fucking incompetent! /s
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.
The lady in the thumbnail looks like Sarah Connor.
