Alex Trelinski
SPAIN’S Tourism Minister has slammed protestors who sprayed visitors to Barcelona with water pistols last weekend, saying that they did not represent the country’s culture of hospitality.
Activists protesting against the effects of mass tourism on the Catalan capital marched through the city centre on Saturday chanting slogans such as ‘tourists go home’.
Some surrounded restaurants and a small group of less than a dozen used water pistols against those who they believed were foreign tourists.
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Speaking on Thursday, Jordi Hereu, who was a previous Barcelona mayor, said that the demonstrators’ actions were ‘reprehensible’ and that the incident was exaggerated by the international media.
Anti-tourism activists have increasingly staged protests in Barcelona and cities like Palma and Malaga, stating that tourists increase the cost of properties meaning that locals cannot afford to live in city centres.
There have also been mass demonstrations in the Canary Islands.
Hereu said the tourism sector needed to be regulated and diversified to make it more sustainable.
“Redistributing the sector’s profits and improving the quality of jobs in tourism would help ease opponents’ concerns”, he added.
He stated that regulation could involve measures such as limiting or even eliminating short-term rentals and capping hotel room numbers, but that was largely up to local and regional authorities.
The Tourism Ministry has predicted that international arrivals will show a 13% annual rise between July and September in what will be another record-breaking year.
