Demonstrators are set to hit the streets of the Catalan capital this weekend with directions to convey their water pistols with which to spray holidaymakers, as a part of a day of mass tourism protests in Spain and different southern European nations.
Spain’s anti-protest season is able to restart this weekend, with demonstrators in Barcelona making ready to take to the streets with water pistols (once more) within the Catalan capital.
In 2024, protestors in Spain’s second metropolis gained international news coverage when a small group of them sprayed tourists with water pistols.
The demonstration was a part of a wider, year-long wave of anti-tourism protests throughout Spain to demand better controls on the tourism trade and, particularly, protest its inflationary influence on the housing market.
Common rents in Spain’s main cities, islands and coastal resorts have skyrocketed within the post-pandemic interval, with a surge within the variety of short-term vacationer lodging rental platforms like Airbnb blamed by many.
READ ALSO: What to expect from the mass tourism protests across Spain in June
Now, on Sunday June fifteenth, the Meeting of Neighbourhoods for Tourism Degrowth (ABDT) has referred to as for a brand new demonstration in Barcelona below the slogan: ‘Tourism is stealing our bread, our properties and our future: we defend town, tourism degrowth NOW!’.
Greater than 100 organisations from throughout the nation have already signed the manifesto.
The march will begin at 12 midday on Sunday within the Jardinets de Gràcia, after which transfer on to metropolis centre spots resembling Passeig de Gràcia and Diagonal. Authorities are recommending that folks within the metropolis use public transport whereas the march is on.
Related protests will happen in different Spanish cities resembling Palma, San Sebastián, Granada and Ibiza, and tright here will even be demos abroad in cities resembling Lisbon, Naples, Venice and Naples, organised by The Southern Europe Community In opposition to Touristification (SET).
Stories within the Spanish press counsel that the goal is to disrupt “vacationer routines” and demand insurance policies to curb what they describe as an “financial monoculture that’s driving out residents.”
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The organising teams additionally contains commerce unions representing employees within the tourism sector and environmental teams resembling Ecologistas en Acción.
Organisers are inviting demonstrators to convey water pistols and toys, a direct reference to an anti-mass tourism demonstration carried out final yr on town’s Ramblas boulevard, the place some protesters sprayed holidaymakers with water as they sat on restaurant terraces.
Protesters in Barcelona not too long ago held up a bus lined it with a big banner studying “Let’s put out the vacationer hearth. June fifteenth – Day of wrestle towards touristification”, looking forward to the protest this weekend.
Through the collection of protests in 2024, some in Spain and world wide puzzled if demonstrations had been changing into overly aggressive and demonising vacationers themselves versus the vacationer trade and gentrification extra usually.
