Protesters in Barcelona have sprayed visitors with water as part of a demonstration against mass tourism.
Demonstrators marching through areas popular with tourists on Saturday chanted “tourists go home” and squirted them with water pistols, while others carried signs with slogans including “Barcelona is not for sale.”
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the city in the latest demonstration against mass tourism in Spain, which has seen similar actions in the Canary Islands and Mallorca recently, decrying the impact on living costs and quality of life for local people.
The demonstration was organised by a group of more than 100 local organizations, led by the Assemblea de Barris pel Decreixement Turístic (Neighborhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth).
The greedy local businesses and the local government letting them keep their probably ridiculous profits is the problem here.
We have a similar problem where I live… It became a rich person vacation spot like 15 years ago and now they’re ruining the town… They buy up the shops, but gut them from being geared towards those that live here to just throw away vacation trinket shops and stupidly overpriced restaurants that all close from fall to spring. They buy all the available housing so they can spend two fucking weeks a year in the house…
I can absolutely empathize with these people. At least here, these rich fucking tourists are literal locusts. No one but themselves benefit: they made a closed system that their money circulates in and all the working people have to leave which ALSO benefits the wealthy as their homes become available to buy… Of course too expensive for us to afford, but what’s $1+million for a 2 week vacation spot for an obscenely wealthy person…