1mo ago

How Tourism Pushed Barcelona to Breaking Point, and How Social Movements Are Fighting Back

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How Tourism Pushed Barcelona to Breaking Point, and How Social Movements Are Fighting Back | naked capitalism

Europe @lemmy.ml

davel [he/him] @lemmy.ml

1mo ago

How Tourism Pushed Barcelona to Breaking Point, and How Social Movements Are Fighting Back

www.nakedcapitalism.com /2025/06/how-tourism-pushed-barcelona-to-breaking-point-and-how-social-movements-are-fighting-back.html

6 comments

'Key demands included ending public subsidies for tourism promotion, regulating short-term rentals to prevent housing loss, cutting cruise ship traffic, and improving labour conditions with fair wages and stable work schedules.' - This sounds strangely sane. It's hard to believe that e.g. greatly reducing the ability of mega cruise ships to dump thousands of tourists at once into the city every day would be unfeasible to implement.
Blame the people in control of the system, not the random person who would like to see a bit of the world while they can.
This has been a long-standing problem in the Mediterranean and mostly in Spain, where many Europeans rent or even own houses that they only use a few months a year. I believe the Spanish government has been enabling this for economic reasons.
This even led to a ghetto effect, where most tourists from one country tend to gather on a certain part of the coast. And Spaniards have been traditionally unfriendly to tourists. Maybe willing and accomodating on the coast, but go inland, you immediately notice it, esp. if you try to converse in English (personal experience).
The ABDT notably prefers the term “touristification” to “overtourism”. According to them, the concept of “overtourism” risks depoliticising the issue, framing it as a simple problem of too many visitors. Instead, they say, the problems are a result of the structural inequalities tied to capitalist accumulation, tourism’s extractive nature, and a sector that funnels community wealth into private hands.
Let's hope other European (mostly mediterranean) countries follow suit. And let's hope this does not just lead to shifting the suffering to further places.
- I am an european resident and home owner in Spain and living here full time (I’ve moved here with my family around 5 years ago) and I agree with its citizens. Vacation homes have been a nuisance on peoples lives for a whole now for multiple reasons:
  Airbnbs are atrocious to communities and to people who actually live there full time ( even if community laws exists and ate voted for by the majority of owners, others simply don’t respect them)
  Lots of tourists are notoriously known for not giving a fuck about anyone or anything and having a bratty behavior toward everyone else.
  Because of point 1 low to middle class spaniards can barely -or simply not- afford homes anymore.
  Far right extremism is growing because of government not being able to handle outside EU immigration properly and basically everyone who doesn’t share the same values, just segregate themselves into ethnic groups, making it harder for both sides to mingle.
  I’ve seen it with my own eyes how, when a place raises in notoriety, it also raises in unlawful behavior by attracting pickpockets or other unlawful behavior or simply squatters, who are historically a huge pain on everyone( okupas)
  All of the above is ofc IMO and subjected to dispute, but this is a general feeling among a lot of people.
  
  Airbnbs are atrocious to communities
  Last time I was in Spain this wasn't even a thing yet the problem already existed.
  But where I live now I have experienced it first hand: I wanted to live in this picturesque village, but Airbnb Tourism has pushed rents to the point that they're just as expensive as in the capital, and I had to move 1 village over where they're half that. Consequently there's fewer true villagers and more and more visitors and actually living in that village is more and more defined by wealth.
Good read. I hope this grows.
Tragedy of the commons all over again.

6 comments