Yves here. Most consider tourism to be an economic boon, even if they are sometimes inconvenient and even a bit rowdy. Barcelona shows that excessive levels can become socially destabilizing. The more mundane version of tourism pushback is situations like the Taj Mahal, where the level of visits is damaging an irreplaceable “attraction”.
By Claudio Milano Researcher, Lecturer and Consultant, Universitat de Barcelona; Antonio Paolo Russo, Professor, Universitat Rovira i Virgili; and Marina Novelli. Professor of Marketing and Tourism & Director of the Sustainable Travel and Tourism Advanced Research Centre, University of Nottingham. Originally published at The Conversation
On April 27 2024, near the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, a touring bus was blocked, sprayed with water pistols, and a banner bearing the slogan “let’s put out the tourism fire” was stuck to its front. It was a headline-grabbing protest against the stranglehold tourism holds over the city, and underscored growing tensions between touristification processes and an increasingly vocal local backlash.
Large-scale protests have made Barcelona synonymous with social resistance to the negative impacts of predatory and extractive tourism, but it is far from alone: popular destinations such the Canary Islands, Málaga, and the Balearic Islands have all seen massive protests against the excesses of tourism over the last year.
People are fed up, and the writing is quite literally on the wall – tourist apartments graffitied with the slogan “tourists go home” have now become an almost ubiquitous sight in many Spanish cities. However, it is not individual tourists that are to blame, but rather the excessive reliance on tourism which has, over several decades, gradually pushed countless residents out of their homes and neighbourhoods.
But how did we get here? As international travel rebounded in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, Barcelona and other Mediterranean cities saw tourists return in remarkable numbers. This led to mounting social unrest, as local communities became increasingly frustrated with how tourism has reshaped urban spaces at their expense.
Residents’ concerns range from housing shortages and job insecurity to environmental damage. The privatisation of public spaces is also high on the agenda in Barcelona, exacerbated by high-profile events, such as the 2024 America’s Cup and Formula One Grand Prix, which brought little benefit to local residents.
The ongoing backlash signals a “we’ve had enough” moment that can no longer be dismissed as mere inconvenience or NIMBYism. Instead, it reflects structural inequalities and deeper conflicts over urban space, social justice, and the power dynamics that underpin the tourism sector’s unchecked growth.
Evolving Activism
Anti-tourism activism in Barcelona traces back to the mid-2010s, when neighbourhoods like Barceloneta first challenged tourism’s role in displacing residents. Since then, groups such as the Neighbourhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth (ABDT) have pushed back against policies fostering excessive reliance on the tourism economy.
The ABDT notably prefers the term “touristification” to “overtourism”. According to them, the concept of “overtourism” risks depoliticising the issue, framing it as a simple problem of too many visitors. Instead, they say, the problems are a result of the structural inequalities tied to capitalist accumulation, tourism’s extractive nature, and a sector that funnels community wealth into private hands.
What distinguishes this current wave of activism from its predecessors is a shift from blunt opposition to providing organised, constructive proposals. At one major demonstration in Barcelona in July 2024, activists presented a manifesto calling for clear measures to reduce economic dependence on tourism, and for a transition towards an eco-social economy.
Key demands included ending public subsidies for tourism promotion, regulating short-term rentals to prevent housing loss, cutting cruise ship traffic, and improving labour conditions with fair wages and stable work schedules. The manifesto also urged leaders to diversify the economy away from tourism, repurpose tourist facilities for social use, and develop programs to support precarious workers.
The movement shows no signs of slowing down. Over the weekend of April 27 2025, exactly one year after the water pistol episode, the Southern Europe against Touristification Network gathered in Barcelona to agree on a shared political agenda. They also convened a coordinated demonstration across multiple cities in Southern Europe for June 15 2025.
Marginalised Groups Hit Hardest
Anti-tourist activism is often dismissed by those with a vested interest in tourism, labelled as either “tourismphobia” or “NIMBYism” – a desire to protect one’s own local area from unwanted development (derived from the acronym of “not in my back yard”).
These labels ignore the fact that tourism-driven economies most strongly impact marginalised groups with little political power, such as tenants, migrants and precarious seasonal workers, and disenfranchised young people. Social movements in Mediterranean cities have taken this to heart, broadening anti-tourism activism to address more general government inaction on housing, labour rights, climate action, and the defence of public space.
These movements confront the complex, interconnected challenges of touristification, including social division of labour, gender inequalities, and capital concentration. They also, importantly, are living proof that many residents want to prioritise community wellbeing over economic growth.
Academics and Politicians Are Failing
Both policy makers and academics are falling short in addressing protesters’ concerns. Countless studies focus on topics like space management, green tourism, or tourism as a tool of empowerment. Few, however, explore the experiences of people living in tourism hotspots, or how the sector produces precarious labour conditions, social exclusion and environmental injustice.
As a result, current policies mostly aim at managing visitors or transport, not at curbing tourism’s growth or addressing power imbalances. This limited approach fails to solve the root causes of the problem, and will only perpetuate inequalities.
Beyond urban transformations, tourism’s reliance on precarious labour is a pressing issue. Many jobs in the sector are low-paid, unstable and highly seasonal. While international organisations and cities’ authorities promote tourism as a driver of economic prosperity and job creation, the question of “what kind of jobs?” is too often overlooked.
Going forward, more grounded, intersectional research is needed, especially longitudinal and ethnographic studies that examine the class, gender, and environmental impacts of tourism. This will, in turn, inform policy-making at all levels, and guide it away from the current predatory, growth-first mindset that is fuelling social conflict and inequalities.
Rather than viewing protests as isolated single-issue nuisances, they should be understood as part of broader struggles for social justice. This movement shows that co-constructed alternatives and proposals need to prioritise community wellbeing over economic growth.
Rethinking urban tourism means reimagining cities as places where residents can thrive, not just survive. To achieve this, we must address the deeper inequalities at the heart of touristification processes.
I don’t know what’s in Barcelona”s water, but we should bottle it and distribute it to every city in the USA.
It begins for me with Buenaventura Durruti, the anarchist who became famous in the Spanish Revolution of 1936:
(Scene from Libertarias that includes quote)
Orwell, who fought in the Spanish Civil War with British Trotskyites, had this to say in his Homage to Catalonia:
These modern Catalonian activists are right about tourism. It’s yet another form of colonialism and exploitation, and Barcelona is wealthy enough and well-organized enough to do without it.
Unsurprisingly, Barcelona is one of the cities beginning to practice Doughnut Economics.
Moreover, tourism is a significant contributor to rendering the Earth inhospitable to civilization. Tourism was responsible for 8.8% of global emission in 2018, and its emissions are increasing at double the rate of the rest of the economy.
Those increases are driven, at least in the USA, by the conspicuous consumption of travel, especially international travel, by the PMC, who regard jetting to their favorite ashram in India as a sign of their sophistication and affluence. Perhaps they should read the Tao te Ching:
The farther you go
the less you know.
Tao te Ching # 47 (Le Guin rendition)
For Cape Town the situation is even worse. Being the victim of its stunning natural beauty, the city is attracting not just camera toting hordes of tourists who come and go, but an influx of digital nomads taking advantage of the weakness of our local currency and the ill-advised digital nomad visa passed by the South African government after an intense pressure campaign by self-interested actors in the political and business space. Youtube is full of “my life as a digital nomad in Cape Town, South Africa” videos where these nomads wax lyrical about the city’s breathtaking natural beauty and how lucky they feel to be “enjoying the world class lifestyle at the tip of Africa at a fraction of the cost of major western cities”. The third, and most insidious group, are the dollar/euro/pound flush foreigners who are snapping up real estate in the city at the rate of knots, pushing up prices beyond what even well-to-do locals struggle to afford.
If you thought this takeover of Cape Town would trigger some Barcelona style pushback by locals and some legislative intervention to curb the negative effects of the city’s booming international popularity, well you’d be wrong. Simply put, city authorities are on board with Cape Town becoming a playground for rich foreigners and the few locals (and most are black) that stage protests against this are exactly the type of locals that TPTB want pushed out to the peripheral areas. White locals suffer in silence and are feeling the pinch of exploding living costs like everyone else, but they dare not criticize a city council that’s facilitating a foreign takeover of their city because the council is largely white. The rebound of post covid international travel is going to pit locals against city authorities and tourists in the years and with designs on becoming a trillion dollar company, you can guess whose side Airbnb is going to be on.
Last sentence was meant to read:
“The rebound of post covid international travel is going to pit locals around the world against tourists and city authorities in years to come (and with designs on becoming a trillion dollar company you can guess whose side Airbnb going to be on).”
I wish Parisians would fight back against this scourge but alas, I see no movement apart from a slight blowback against the short term rentals. It’s frankly infuriating to try to get around in the city and do normal stuff that one needs to accomplish without having to deal with the instagramming hordes who all seem to have main character syndrome. And don’t start me on the traffic. Or how 1st class train cars don’t look or feel any different from 2nd now. At least I still have two quiet hotels where I know mostly natives stay. I blame the loser PS/Green mayorality for all of it.
It’s finally becoming an issue in Hawai’i. The Lahaina fire really brought it to the fore. Not to mention the many Native Hawaiians that are forced to live on the beach because the rents are are so high. The dichotomy of seeing poor people living in tents on the beach and really rich people like Oprah and Mark Zuckerberg buying up so much finite land is finally is getting political. Years ago they started cracking down on tourists at Hanauma Bay, on Oahu, because there were so many and they were killing the reef. And a new Green tax is now being added to the room tax to defray the costs of restoring fragile ecosystems, being loved to death by tourists. Apparently the first in the world. I personally think it’s too little too late. I think the best thing Hawai’i could do is to kick out all the corrupt Dems, who have been running the place since 1954, and secede from the USA. Let the Kanaka Maoli decide what they want.
The motto of the Hawaiian Kingdom and of the State of Hawai’i is Ua mau ke ea i ka aina i ka pono. The life of the land is preserved in righteousness. About time the state fulfilled the motto.
The culture of touristification is mired in nostalgia for a distant past, just as the Grand Prix auto racing and the America’s Cup blighting Barcelona are nothing but unrecognizable pastiches of the 1950’s. The planet was far less populous and most of it was cut-off by politics and poverty. Tourism had a tiny impact.
Today there are 8 billion lives in simultaneous being and far more of them than Mr. Putin’s “Golden Billion” can access cheap flights and are willing to put up with the crummy conditions of AirBnB’s and hostels in order to experience the glories of western civilization that their parents had only been able to dream about. Look at the videos of the swarms of people fleeing the latest eruption of Mount Etna — it’s a mob scene high on that once-lonely mountain.
The irony is that when I began to travel internationally 50 years ago the world really was diverse and travel provided new experiences. Today in our globalized culture I visit far-away places and see shops selling the same goods and identical fast-food outlets as I would see in my home country. I have to ask myself whether it’s worth it to sit for hours in a tube belching-out ozone-depleting carbon dioxide in order to experience my own culture reflected back at me.