Many Remainers struggled to understand why a majority voted against EU membership, believing it to be undeniably beneficial to the UK economy. One hypothesis is that Brexiteers felt benefits had been lost; perhaps they voted for Brexit to teach a lesson to greedy elites who felt wealth was not being distributed fairly.
Here in Spain, to the surprise of tourism authorities, it has suddenly become unpopular. It is easy to see why they see tourism as an undeniable advantage. After all, it accounts for around 13 percent of GDP and a quarter of all new jobs created in the country last year. So why should Spain welcome a few hundred million tourists this year (compared to 85 million last year), making it the most visited country in the world?
Do protesters feel that the wealth generated by tourism is not shared equitably?
But it turns out that not everyone thinks the same. This summer, a well-organised wave of hostility against tourism swept across Spain. In Barcelona and Madrid, Malaga, San Sebastian, Seville, Alicante, Cadiz and the Balearic and Canary Islands, thousands of angry locals gathered. Their banners read “Tourism kills the city”, “Your trip, our misery” and “Tourist go home” in English. And, if the message isn’t clear enough, in some cases they have used water pistols to chase tourists away from cafes and restaurant terraces. Last month, in Mallorca, locals swooped in to occupy one of the tourist-favoured beaches.
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Do the protesters feel that the wealth generated by tourism is not shared equitably? Last weekend in Placencia, my wife and I enjoyed a leisurely late breakfast in the beautiful Plaza Mayor while a waiter struggled to serve 14 tables – no joke, as the temperature soared to 37 degrees Celsius. Our employee was not only overworked, but definitely underpaid. Although their work is vital, many hospitality workers work very long, exhausting and antisocial hours for the national minimum wage of €1,100 (£934). Our breakfast cost €16 (£13.60) – about two hours’ worth of earnings for a waiter or hotel cleaner.
Meanwhile, as tourist numbers have increased, more and more residences have been taken off the long-term market and converted into short-term holiday rentals. The decline in supply has led to sharp increases in long-term rental prices; a room in Ibiza costs between €700 (£595) and €1,000 (£850) a month. It is no wonder that many hospitality workers in the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands now have to live in tents and cars.
Local residents blame visitors for traffic jams, water shortages, pollution and environmental degradation, rude behaviour, congestion on public transport and long queues at accident and emergency departments. Politicians – local, regional and national – are rushing to find a solution to a problem they didn’t see coming. Suddenly tourism taxes, a crackdown on short-term holiday rentals, limiting the size of tourist groups, fines for anti-social behaviour, high-level marketing to attract quality tourism and increased investment in local infrastructure are being discussed. Meanwhile, politicians in Spain have warned protesters to be careful what they wish for, just as Britain was warned not to vote for Brexit – tourism is what lifted them out of poverty.
On that last point, many low-wage workers in the hospitality industry diverge. Tourism, they say, has actually made them worse off, because they can no longer live in the parts of the city where their families have lived for generations: “I lived in a friendly neighborhood downtown where everyone knew each other. Now it’s a tourist theme park and I have to live outside the city,” one waitress told me.
He is right: whatever the economic benefits of tourism, it has transformed local landscapes and ‘Disneyfied’ city centres as locals are forced to accommodate short-term visitors. There may be another similarity between Spain’s anti-tourist sentiment and the British vote for Brexit. Like many ‘levers’, can Spaniards protesting against mass tourism be understood as people ‘somewhere’, people who feel a strong connection to a cohesive local community with shared values?