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PROTESTS

Spanish farmers roll out slow tractor protests

Farmers from Spain's northeastern Catalonia region took to the highways again Tuesday, blocking roads and access to key infrastructure with slow-moving tractors in protest over foreign competition and conditions in the drought-hit agricultural sector.

Spanish farmers roll out slow tractor protests
Demonstrators block the main entrance of the port of Tarragona. Photo: LLUIS GENE/AFP.

The demonstrations followed an earlier string of farmers’ protests that struck various European countries in recent weeks, including Italy, France and Belgium.

Several hundred tractors from across the region converged on the access roads leading to Tarragona port about 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Barcelona as widespread agricultural protests entered their second week.

Further north, near the border with France, demonstrators blocked part of the AP-7 highway some 30 kilometres (17 miles) north of Girona, stopping traffic with their tractors, erecting barricades and torching dry branches.

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: Why are farmers in Spain protesting?

Elsewhere, just over a dozen tractors blocked an access road leading to Mercabarna, Barcelona’s main wholesale market for fresh produce in the south of the city.

Tuesday’s protests, scattered across this region of eight million residents, were focused on the “unfair competition” from products imported from countries “not required to meet European standards”, said a statement from the Pagesos union which called the demos.

As in other European countries, angry farmers have been protesting over rising costs, high fuel prices, bureaucracy and the environmental requirements in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its forthcoming “Green Deal”.

READ ALSO: How long will the farmers’ roadblocks in Spain last?

Spain is one of Europe’s leading producers of fruit and vegetables but its farms have has suffered from a lack of rainfall that has plagued the Iberian Peninsula for the last three years. Droughts are exacerbated by human-caused climate change.

Last Wednesday, Catalan farmers turned out en masse with nearly 1,000 tractors converging on Barcelona to put their demands to the regional
government.

The latest demonstrations, which have rumbled on for just over a week, will once again be stepped up on Wednesday when various agricultural organisations
have called farmers to hit the streets across the country.

On February 21 they are planning a huge demonstration outside the agriculture ministry in Madrid.

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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. 

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

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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