It all appeared to begin in early July with angry Barceloni residents squirting tourists with water as they sat on restaurant terraces. “Tourists go home!” shouted locals to bemused diners in the busy Las Ramblas district, voicing their frustration at the problems their city faces, constantly overrun with visitors. Last year around 12 million people visited the Catalan capital, bringing €9.6 billion (£8.2 billion) to the local economy.
However, protests against tourism in Spain are not new. Anti-tourist graffiti – “Your luxury trip is my daily misery” – was appearing in Barcelona as early as 2017. Many academics, governments, and international agencies like the UN World Tourism Organisation saw COVID lockdowns as an opportunity to reset. They advocated for new forms of tourism, rejecting the unsustainable growth of the past.
In 2023 the bad behaviour of tourists and clashes with locals prompted the BBC to ask: “Is this the summer of bad tourists?” But what caused this year’s protests, and what can be done in the short term to support fairer tourism in travel hotspots, remains a pressing question with no easy answers.
