Big demonstrations in the Spanish State against mass tourism
Featured image: demonstration against mass tourism in Mallorca. Source: Diario de Mallorca
Recently there have been big demonstrations against mass tourism in the Spanish State. On July 21, there was a demonstration which gathered 50,000 demonstrators in Mallorca. In the same place, on May 25, this year more than 25,000 demonstrators gathered in another demonstration:
Even before that, on April there were huge demonstrations in other place which is also facing mass tourism, the Canary Islands. For example, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife more than 50,000 people gathered in a huge demonstration, and at the same time there were demonstration in all the other islands of the Canary archipelago.
The Spanish State receives a huge quantity of tourists and it expects to receive some 90 million tourists during the year 2024. Only in the first half of the year, it received over 38 million visitors, a 5.4% more than last year. That means, the trend of mass tourism is increasing. With the growing touristification (in which the local economy adapts itself towards tourism) in some cities, the speculation is wildly increasing, and that at the same time, causes the phenomenon of gentrification in the working class neighborhoods, that means, the eviction of the proletariat from their houses when they cannot afford anymore to live in proletarian areas1. There are many cities of the Spanish State which are facing this situation: Barcelona received 26 million tourists in 2023, almost five times the amount of its population. Another case is Malaga, which received 1.6 million tourists in 2023, and city which has more than 12,000 touristic apartments, which is 15 times more than in 2016. Situation is also worsening in Valencia, and the newspaper Servir al Pueblo gives some numbers about it: “The housing price in 2023 was of 2,130 euros per square meter, a 19.14% more than in 2022. (…) On April 2024 a renting apartment costs a 139% more than 10 years ago in the Valencia region”.
Before this unbearable situation in the Spanish State, which has influence in the rise of the rent prices as well as in other costs and in the worsening of services, many workers have taken the streets in many cities to protest. These mobilizations have been seen in many parts of the State, and they had a lot of strength specially in the Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Catalonia, and in cities of the Mediterranean coast such as Malaga. But these demonstrations are not limited to the Mediterranean, but also have been carried out in many other places such as Cantabria in the north, Madrid at the center of the country, or Donostia in Euskalherria, which currently is one of the cities with the most expensive housing in the Spanish State.
The bourgeoisie is reacting quickly before these protests and has not hesitated on criminalizing those workers who are taking the streets. After these recent demonstrations in Mallorca, the bourgeois owners of the hotels in the island denounced that the demonstrators committed “vandalism acts”, attempting thus to criminalize the protest. The speculating bourgeoisie and the owners of apartments and the bourgeois newspapers were quick to label these protests as “touristphobia”. Thus, they also stated that these mobilizations where harming the image and the touristic sector of cities such as Barcelona, and they largely explained the damage caused by the demonstrations, how unappropriated is “to blame” one sector of the housing prices increasing and they even kind of blackmailed by stating that attack tourism, is like attack one of the few alternatives to unemployment in some cities.
As Servir al Pueblo points out, this problem cannot be approached as it would be isolated, because if the problem is only tourism itself, then one could think this could be solved by developing a kind of sustainable and responsible tourism, by limiting it and therefore, by limiting its bad consequences. Tourists are not the main issue, being mostly workers from other countries without real options for their recreational time. Hence, accountable for this situation are the imperialists, in this specific case, Spanish monopolies who have not enough exporting financial capital and looting wide regions of the world, but also speculate, exploit and evict the proletarians in the Spanish cities from their homes.
1We recommend the following article of the newspaper Servir al Pueblo: https://serviralpuebloperiodico.wordpress.com/2024/07/22/el-problema-del-turismo-masivo-el-caso-de-valencia-y-la-estrecha-relacion-entre-gentrificacion-e-imperialismo/ . In this article it is explained in detail the process experienced by the Spanish cities which receive a big number of tourists, using as an example the city of Valencia, and putting in relation gentrification and touristification, putting on the table and on the center, the role of imperialism in it.
