Tourism is important to Spain’s economy but critics argue that the country is too dependent on it.
SCOTT SIMON, EDITOR:
What’s not to love about Spain? – Barcelona, Toledo, Madrid, 5,000 kilometers of coastline, paella, Rioja. But as Miguel Macias reports, some locals feel that their country is loved too much.
MIGUEL MACIAS, BY NOTE: Let me start by sharing a story, something that happened to me recently. I was visiting Madrid for a conference, so I thought I would stay for the weekend with the family. One night after putting the baby to sleep in our Airbnb apartment, I went outside to wait for the birth. That’s when I saw a pink, round sticker on the building’s intercom. It was running away, this used to be my home. And then the hashtag, the curse word I won’t say on the radio, Airbnb.
PICU: (Interpretation) About two years ago, a good friend of mine saw his building being sold to an investment fund that was going to turn his entire building into a house. of tourists.
MACIAS: I’m Picu. It’s a stick maker I saw in Madrid. We are not using his last name because what he is doing could be considered vandalism. The friend Picu is talking about had to leave her apartment after the new owner started construction and made her and her partner uninhabitable.
PICU: (Interpretation) And I said, we need to do something. People should know that they are evicting us from our apartments. I think it’s important for Airbnb users to learn that they are staying in places that used to be people’s homes. They turn our cities into amusement parks.
MACIAS: Picu is not the only one who feels this way. In fact, they are now part of a national organization that opposes what they say is the negative impact that tourism has on Spanish cities. In 2023, more than 85 million people visited this country. So in 2024, we saw a response to that with protests in Madrid, Malaga, the Canary Islands and, of course, Barcelona.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED TRAVELERS: (Singing) Tourists, go home. [inaudible] Tourists, go home.
MACIAS: During this protest, on July 6, in Barcelona, some participants used water cannons to attack tourists. That certainly caught the attention of the press.
DANIEL PARDO: (Through translator) Well, this is a bit silly, but if we pay attention, they give us reasons to use water guns again. By the way, this was not well organized. It was developed by some of the protesters.
MACIAS: Daniel Pardo is a member of a neighborhood association that fights mass tourism. They helped organize the protest in Barcelona. Pardo cites health issues, the environment, income inequality and simply the fact that the city no longer welcomes its own people. But above all…
PARDO: (Through interpreter) The impact that worries us the most at this time is the impact of access to housing, which is a serious social problem that we are facing, not only in Barcelona but in other cities of the country.
MACIAS: In some places, in the historic center of cities like Seville, there are more tourist houses than locals. That means residents are being pushed to other areas away from the city center. But in some cases, that’s not possible, like in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa.
ALFONSO BOULLON: (Through translator) We have grown incredibly, without any control, without any kind of plan and, in some cases, even breaking the law.
MACIAS: Alfonso Boullon is the spokesman for the main environmental education organization in the Canary Islands. He said that some of the developments in the villages on the islands violate environmental laws.
BOULLON: (Through translator) In the Canary Islands, there are many hotels that have been ordered to be demolished, and they are not demolished because the local government represents economic interests rather than enforcing the law.
MACIAS: But Alfonso Boullon also makes something clear.
BOULLON: (Through translator) We are not against tourism. We are all travelers at some point. We love to travel and see the world. The problem is the size of the industry, the model we follow.
MACIAS: Picu from Madrid, the woman who made the stickers to send around town – disagrees.
PICU: (Through translator) We all complain about tourism, but we should all travel a little. We need to exercise discipline, too.
MACIAS: Whether with less tourism or more in terms of behavior, activists in Barcelona, Madrid, the Canary Islands and many other cities in Spain are not protesting. But with tourism accounting for a tenth of economic growth and one in 10 jobs, it will be difficult to undo Spain’s economic reliance on this sector.
For NPR News, I’m Miguel Macias from Seville, Spain.
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