A huge 15,000 strong protest took place at a key Spanish tourist hotspot, complaining they are ‘strangers in our own city’. The marchers were carrying placards with messages including ‘One more tourist is one less local resident” and “Padlocks out of our neighbourhoods’ in felt-tip pen, in reference to the coded key holders outside tourist apartment blocks.
British tourists have been branded a ‘plague’ in Spain with people in Malaga saying their city stinks of beer at 11am. A protest organiser said: “We’re not going to allow ourselves to be expelled from our own city. We’re staying put. We’re not going to allow Malaga to become a theme park emptied of local residents. We’re not going to allow shops to be replaced by franchises, pavements with terraces and rents with eviction letters.”
Anger has been growing in Spain and its islands with local people saying they are being priced out of living in their own areas, how they are becoming overcrowded and polluted. The demonstration was organised by the Sindicato de Inquilinas e Inquilinos de Malaga – Malaga Tenants Union – backed by nearly 50 other organisations including Greenpeace and Oxfam, marching under the slogan: “Malaga para vivir, no para sobrevivir” – which translates to “Malaga to live in, not survive in.”
Soon after the protest started in the central Plaza de la Merced, a right-wing group attempted to hijack the protest, chorusing: “Council housing for nationals”. However, this was met with calls of “Faciists out of our neighbourhoods,” and they soon disbanded.
The crowds walked slowly through Malaga town centre, ending in Constitution Square with the reading of a manifesto where protest organisers said: “We’re not going to allow ourselves to be expelled from our own city. We’re staying put.
“We’re not going to allow Malaga to become a theme park emptied of local residents. We’re not going to allow shops to be replaced by franchises, pavements with terraces and rents with eviction letters.”
Earlier this year, stickers were plastered to the front of tourist apartment blocks in the city, with messages including: “F*** off from here”. Others alluded to the same problems expressed by other Spanish tourist spots including Tenerife about the lack of affordable accommodation as a result of mass tourism: “This used to be my house”.
Hundreds of anti-mass tourism campaigners took over picture postcard cove Calo des Moro in Majorca, made famous around the world by influencers. Islanders kept their promise to ‘reclaim’ stunning cove from foreign holidaymakers by taking up every inch of space on the tiny 98-foot wide stretch of sand with their beach towels shortly after 8am on June 16.
