Thousands of protesters marched in Barcelona this weekend to express their anger at mass tourism and its effects on Spain’s most visited city. Passersby dining at restaurants in the La Barceloneta community were drenched as protesters sprayed them with water guns.
The video shows diners forced to replace tables in some restaurants to escape Saturday’s protests, while other restaurants were symbolically boarded up by protesters.
Carrying banners that read “Tourists go home,” the protesters called for a reduction in the number of foreign visitors to Barcelona, stopping at the doors of hotels and restaurants to confront tourists.
“I have nothing against tourism, but here in Barcelona we suffer from an excess of tourism that makes our city uninhabitable,” one of the protesters told AFP.
The local government says the cost of housing has risen by 68% in the Spanish city over the past decade, one of the main issues of contention for disgruntled residents.
“In recent years the city has become absolutely tourism-oriented, and what we need is a city for citizens and not for tourists,” another protester told the Reuters camera.
In June, Barcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni said he would block the renewal of the thousands of tourist licenses that allow owners to rent accommodation to foreign visitors until 2028. The move would make accommodations, currently advertised on platforms such as Airbnb, available to locals, according to Collboni.
According to authorities, more than 12 million tourists visited the city, highlighted by emblematic places such as the Sagrada Familia basilica, last year alone.
The latest protest follows similar large-scale protests at other tourist hotspots in Spain. A protest in Malaga, in the south of the country, brought together about 15,000 more people who opposed over-the-top tourism in June, while the island of Palma de Mallorca. In Mallorca, more than 10,000 people protested against the impact of mass tourism in May.
According to Spain’s National Institute of Statistics, INE, in the first five months of 2024 alone, more than 33 million tourists visited the country, an increase of 13. 6% compared to last year.
Spain is not the only European country that suffers the effects of tourism on the local population. Earlier this year, Venice, Italy, became the first city to impose a fee on daily visitors.