The people of Malaga and other Spanish cities are fed up with tourists

The Malaga Tenants' Union is calling on the authorities to change the approach of Spanish cities to tourism. They were behind the June protest, which was attended by thousands of people, during which they pointed out the negative effects of tourism on their city, such as rising living costs, crowds and gentrification.

“The situation is that Malaga has really reached a tipping point where people feel the city is falling apart. It's the same feeling you get when you walk into an amusement park. There's a stream of people who are consuming the city without actually inhabiting it,” Kike Espana of the Malaga Tenants' Union told the BBC.

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And it's not just about Malaga. As the BBC reminds us, Spaniards They have been protesting throughout the summer for the same reasons in other major tourist destinations, including Barcelona, ​​Alicante and the Canary and Balearic Islands.

In April, a group of activists in Tenerife staged a three-week hunger strike against the construction of new tourism megaprojects. In Barcelona, ​​demonstrators fired water pistols at foreign visitors, and among their banners were slogans like “Tourism is killing the city” and “Tourists go home.”

Spain became a tourist center more than half a century ago when northern Europeans began arriving on its coast and islands.

Currently, the industry accounts for about 13 percent of the Spanish GDPand after bouncing back from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is breaking records in both revenues and arrivals.

In 2023, the country was visited by 85 million foreign visitors, and this year even more is expected, over 90 million, which puts it just behind Francethe most popular tourist destination in the world.

José Luis Zoreda, president of Exceltur, the tourism industry association, prefers to talk not about the number of visitors but about the amount of revenue generated by the industry. He estimates that this year it amounts to 200 billion euros in direct and indirect activity. He also points out that tourism has allowed the Spanish economy to perform better than most of its neighbours in the aftermath of COVID-19.

“Over the last few years, we have had the highest share of growth in our economy. In 2023, we were responsible for 80 percent of the growth in Spain's entire GDP,” Zoreda told the BBC.

Thus, the sheer size of the tourism sector and its strong growth are driving the expansion of the Spanish economy.

But, as the BBC reports, there is a growing feeling that the cost of this success has been too high for the Spanish themselves, and this year's wave of protests has created a sense that a turning point has been reached, with many believing that their cities are more concerned with the welfare and comfort of visitors than with their residents.

“Tourism used to be seen as a positive economic phenomenon that has a huge impact on our GDP, but the number of visitors from abroad has become so huge that we are now seeing its negative effects, especially in cities. Tourism competes for space and the number of people on the streets becomes unbearable for many residents,” says Paco Femenia-Serra, a lecturer in tourism and geography at the Complutense University of Madrid.

Locals say tourism has not only made their towns less pleasant, but has also pushed many smaller businesses out of city centres. In their place have chain restaurants, bars and shops, and prices have gone up.

However, the most frequently mentioned problem is housing. In the largest tourist resorts in Spain there is a large number of short-term rental properties aimed at tourists.

A recent study by El País newspaper found that several areas of Malaga have the highest percentage of Airbnb properties in Spain. A quarter of all apartments in the Plaza de la Merced area are designated as tourist rentals.

Landlords can charge more for short-term rentals than they would for long-term tenants, which causes prices to rise overall. Locals say it’s hard to find a flat in central Malaga for less than €1,200-1,300 a month, with the average monthly salary in Andalusia being €1,600.

“If the people of Malaga have nowhere to live, who will provide services to tourists?” Isabel Rodríguez, the housing minister for Spain's ruling Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), said during a forum in July. “Where will the waiters who serve us a glass of wine and a plate of sardines live?” she added.

As Rodriguez’s comments suggest, Spain’s political class has begun to acknowledge and grapple with the tourism problem. Catalonia and the Balearic Islands have already introduced a “tourist tax,” charging a flat fee of up to €4 per person per day, depending on the type of accommodation.

Palma de Mallorca is trying to limit the number of tourists arriving by sea, with no more than three cruise ships allowed to dock in the city per day, and only one of them carrying more than 5,000 passengers.

Steps are also being taken to address the problem of tourist accommodation. This year, the Andalusian regional government gave towns and cities the power to introduce their own controls on short-term rentals.

In the north-east, Barcelona has already announced its intention to withdraw all of the approximately 10,000 tourist accommodation licences currently in circulation by 2028.

Femenia-Serra notes that containing the situation in Spanish tourism is a “very difficult problem”, given the economic importance of the industry to the country, but believes restrictions are necessary.

– If we want to talk about sustainable tourism or fewer tourists, we should discuss restrictions on activities and higher restrictions and more regulation of a sector that has so far been able to operate to some extent without restrictions, he says. As a possible solution, he suggests introducing restrictions on the number of flights to certain destinations.

As for Malaga, Kike Espana wants to see restrictions on rents and efforts to provide more housing for the city's residents. At the same time, he says that neither he nor other activists are against tourism per se, but the way it is managed in Spain. He hopes the protests will continue.

– We are against city models that focus solely on tourism. We cannot lose all the energy, complexity and diversity of our cities – he emphasizes.