Water guns returned to the streets of Barcelona on Sunday, when thousands of people gathered to protest against mass tourism in cities around southern Europe.
In Genoa, Italy, the protesters raised suitcases through the narrow cobbled streets of the city center, as part of what they called a “noisy walk”. In Lisbon, the protesters carried an effigy handmade city patron from their homonymous church to the site of a future five -star hotel. And on the Spanish island of Mallorca, the inhabitants stopped on Saturday a two -story tour bus, turned on flares and hung a banner.
In Barcelona, the center of recent protests against excessive tourism in European cities, protesters with banners in which “tourists were read, go to their homes” and “Tourism steals us” marched by the so -called Gold Milla of the city, a street flanked by luxury boutiques and high -end hotels, spraying visitors with water guns in front of a Louis Vuitton store. Outside a nearby hostel, there was a fray with the employees, and some protesters launched fireworks. A police barricade arrested the march near the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia, one of the main tourist attractions of the city.
Doming’s protests emerged as a result of a workshop weekend held in Barcelona by the Southern Europe Network against tourist in April, after the demonstrations of last July in which the water guns emerged as a symbol of indignation due to the effects of mass tourism.
The protests are the last of a growing movement promoted by problems related to the quality of life, such as the high cost of housing and environmental damages, which, according to the organizers of the protests, are a consequence of excessive tourism.
Joan Mas, 31 -year -old waiter resident in Barcelona, said that general perception is that tourists have much more money than local residents: they arrive to party, rent places that those who live in the city cannot afford with their salaries. But he added that the problem is the tourist model that revolves around bars, real estate and hotels.
Tourism represents more than 12% of the gross domestic product of Spain.
The organizers emphasized, before Sunday’s protests, in which their objective was to raise awareness about the negative repercussions that their cities are increasingly focused on serving tourists instead of the local population.
Asier Basurto, who helped organize Sunday’s protest in San Sebastián, a tourist city of the northern coast of Spain, said that the enemy of protesters are not tourists, but those who take the opportunity to negotiate and exploit the homes and lives of the local population. Basurto said that the development of the city, focused on tourism, scared away young people and turned San Sebastián into a simple decoration.
The protesters of San Sebastián, who has the highest housing costs in the country, chanted slogans such as “sustainable tourism is a mythological animal” and asked that the number of visitors to the city decrease.
Basurto pointed out the Palacio Bellas Artes Theater, a cultural symbol of the city built more than 100 years ago, which is being reformed to make it a luxury hotel owned by Hilton.
There were also protests in the popular Spanish tourist islands of Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza. These islands, with a population of just over a million inhabitants, welcomed more than 15 million international tourists in 2024.
“This tourism model does not bring economic prosperity, but problems such as the real estate crisis,” said Pere Joan Female, spokesman for the less tourism group, more life, who organized the protests in Palma de Mallorca, where the protesters stopped the tourist bus on Saturday.
The islands have faced a shortage of police, health personnel and teachers because the high costs of housing, which the organizers of the protests greatly attribute to excess tourism, have made it difficult to capture public sector workers.
In Venice, who has fought against the effects of excessive tourism and has addressed one day hikers with a daily rate of 5 or 10 euros, a small protest denounced two hotels recently built in an area that had been free of hotels. Next, a banner was loaded on a ship that said “Stop Hotel = + Città”, more than 6 meters long, and took it floating to another place where an old social housing complex has been transformed into tourist rental homes.
The activists of Genoa, where the protesters made no luggage noisy, said that, although the city did not register the same level of tourism as other Italian destinations such as Rome or Venice, they expected that, making clear their demands now, they could force local legislators to take measures to manage tourism before it was decentralized.
International arrivals to Europe increased almost 5% in the first part of this year compared to the same 2024 period.
Some destinations have taken measures in response to protesters’ concerns. The Greek island of Santorini and Bruges, Belgium, have imposed new standards and taxes on their tourist industries. Barcelona plans to prohibit Airbnb rentals at the end of 2028. Ibiza and other places are limiting cruises. Palma authorities announced an initiative a few days before the protests to withdraw more than 1600 sun loungers from the local beaches, in response to the pressure of the activists to facilitate the enjoyment of the sea.
Some travelers affected by Barcelona’s protests expressed anger. A visitor from a group of South Korean tourists sprayed with water in front of the Louis Vuitton store complained: “Thus do not do things, as if we were animals.”