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TOURISM

‘It kills the city’: Barcelona’s youth protest against mass tourism

Around 2,000 young people took to the streets of central Barcelona on Saturday in what started off as an anti-capitalism protest but ended up becoming a cry against mass tourism. 

Published: 10 June 2024 14:09 CEST
'It kills the city': Barcelona's youth protest against mass tourism
Protests against mass tourism have been taking place in Barcelona for at least a decade now. (Photo by LLUIS GENE / AFP)

Under the slogan “Health, Land and Future – Let’s defend the territory”, the march was organised by left-wing youth groups with a variety of grievances and demands, from housing to environmentalism, Palestine to anti-capitalism and not least a change to the Catalan capital’s mass tourism model. 

“We find ourselves in the context of an unprecedented eco-social crisis,” Miquel Roca, spokesperson for the 8J (8th of June) collective told reporters at the march, adding that “when there’s no future, as young people we have to go out into the streets”.

Police, who were present at the march that started off at Barcelona’s Arc de Triomf, estimated 1,700 protesters took part, whilst organisers said it was closer to 3,000 people at the first youth-driven demonstration in Barcelona since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Even though the focus of this demo was not just mass tourism as in the case of numerous marches across Spain over the past two months, the rhetoric did turn to this divisive matter.

Demonstrators chanted “Tourists go home” and “Tourism kills the neighbourhoods”, while holidaymakers on Las Ramblas took photos of the march as if it were another city attraction. 

“Tourism kills the city” and “Guiris go home” was graffitied on bus stops and walls in English, as flare-wielding protesters held banners reading “Sorry, tourist. BCN is already sold out”.

READ ALSO: Good tourist, bad tourist – How to travel responsibly in Spain

A number of anti-tourism demonstrations have taken part in Barcelona over the past decade before overtourism was considered a ‘national’ problem, from protests against the number of cruise ships spilling thousands of tourists into the city centre every day to demos against the noise disturbances city centre residents have to deal with at night.

Barcelona was in essence the first city in Spain to suffer the consequences of its own success in the context of mass tourism – becoming ‘too popular’, a path the southern city of Málaga is now following.

It’s the first anti-mass tourism protest in Barcelona in 2024, after other protests in the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands, Madrid, Girona, Cantabria and soon Málaga making national and international headlines. 

READ ALSO: ‘Gentrified out of existence’ – Madrid protest adds weight to Spain’s anti-tourism wave

Making ends meet as a young person in Barcelona is particularly hard currently, as average rents for a 80 sqm flat are €1,700, around €800 more than decade ago. 

The minimum amount of money needed every month to get by in the Catalan capital is €1,516, according to a recent study by Barcelona authorities. That’s €550 more than in 2016.

Spain’s main daily El País ran an article in October 2023 titled “Barcelona is even expensive for expats now: ‘If they don’t earn €50,000 they can’t afford to live here”.

According to Barcelona City Hall, 25 to 29 year olds in Barcelona earn an average annual salary of €22,348 gross, making their emancipation very hard.

The average age to leave the nest in Spain is 30, Eurostat reports, one of the latest ages in the EU only ahead of Italy, Greece and some Balkan countries.

READ ALSO: Where in Spain do locals ‘hate’ tourists?

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PROPERTY

Spain considers banning tourist lets in residential buildings

The Spanish government has announced it's studying the possibility of prohibiting tourist apartments in residential buildings where property owners live.

Published: 25 June 2024 16:44 CEST
Spain considers banning tourist lets in residential buildings

The Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda, Isabel Rodríguez, announced this Tuesday that the Government is studying a reform of the Horizontal Property Law in order to allow property owners to prohibit tourist apartments in their residential buildings.

In Spain, each building has what’s known as a community of neighbours, referred to La Comunidad or Comunidad de Vecinos in Spanish, and essentially the Spanish government is considering giving them veto power over tourist apartments in their buildings.

READ ALSO: ‘La comunidad’: What property owners in Spain need to know about homeowners’ associations

The announcement was stated in an interview on Telecinco, in which Rodríguez stated that this move comes as a consequence of recent supreme court rulings on tourist apartments in Oviedo in Asturias and San Sebastián in the Basque Country.

In the rulings, the magistrates concluded that the rental of housing for tourist use is an economic activity, and agreed that communities of owners in two separate buildings could ban tourist rentals in several apartments.  

“It will be the neighbourhood communities that will also be able to participate in these types of decisions, because this phenomenon, which is not exclusive to our country, affects the entire world and the main capitals in Europe,” explained the minister.

READ ALSO – UPDATE: Which cities in Spain have new restrictions on tourist rentals?

Recently, Rodríguez has criticised that the proliferation of tourist apartments causes problems for locals, that it stops them from being able to access decent housing and raises the price of rentals.

She praised the regions which have taken steps to try and put a stop to this and gave the recent example of Barcelona City Council, which announced last Friday that it would eliminate all tourist apartments by the end of 2028.

She believes this move in Barcelona “will benefit citizens who want to live in their city, who do not want it to be a theme park and who prioritise the right to access housing over economic interests”.

Spain’s Horizontal Property Law , which was modified once in 2019, already states that it “requires a favourable vote of three-fifths of the total number of owners who, in turn, represent three-fifths of the participation quotas”. This means that already owners have a big say in whether tourist licences can be granted to apartments in their buildings.

However, the particular wording of the law has been the subject of much legal controversy and judicial interpretation. The reason is because the wording of the law only mentions the possibility for communities to “limit or condition” tourist use, but they do not have the power to “prohibit” since the law does not expressly say so.

Several regions have their own rulings through regional courts, but this new announcement aims to make it universal across the board in Spain and ensure that there’s no room for misinterpretation.

Rodríguez is set to meet this afternoon with the governing board of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) and the Housing and Tourism Commissions to address this matter and come to a decision. 

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