Walter Finch
PUBLIC opinion is starting to turn against mass tourism in Spain, the latest opinion poll shows.
Despite being the lifeblood of the economy at 13% of GDP and providing jobs for nearly three million people, the country stands out among its neighbours in the YouGov European attitudes to overtourism survey.
It found that one in three (32%) Spaniards believe there are too many international visitors in their area, far higher than next-nearest France (18%).
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A further 28% of people now take these views even further, holding a negative opinion of foreign tourists in general – in France the number stands at 16%.
And Spain is the only country surveyed where more people are against tourist flats (37%) than in favour (33%).
The overall discontent with foreign visitors in Spain far outstrips those surveyed in fellow tourism hotspots Italy and France.
“My city is becoming a nightmare,” says anti-tourism activist Marta Pérez, 37, who lives in Cadiz, Andalucia.
Although a trained secondary school teacher, she finds herself living an economically ‘precarious’ life working as a waitress in a cafe.
For Marta, the worst aspect of mass tourism comes in the form of tourist apartments, something that she would like to see banned immediately.
“People are having to share apartments thanks to the arrival of mass tourism pushing up the rents to unaffordable levels.
“Landlords are constantly kicking families out of their homes to make way for tourist apartments, and then they can’t find new homes in the area.
“They end up having to move away and change their lives entirely.
There are many old people who have lived in the historical city centre for decades and refuse to leave their apartments, according to Marta.
But they become afraid to leave their front doors open – something they’ve done all their lives – because they find their buildings filled with strange people coming and going at all hours.
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And coupled with that, she adds, people drink in the streets late into the night, they party constantly, they ring the buzzer at 4am and they leave their bags of rubbish in the doorways.
“The problem with tourist apartments is that they annoy you when you’re at home in your own home,” Marta said.
On banning tourism outright, the Cadiz local considered it ‘too complicated and totalitarian.’
But she would ‘manage and regulate it’, starting with increases in taxes on tourists who come to Spain, while also educating them on how to be a ‘conscientious traveller’.
“Stay in a hotel, not a tourist apartment,” she recommends.
“Take out your rubbish and leave it in the right bins. Try as best as you can not to annoy the people who live in the area. We all have to travel more conscientiously on an individual level.”
Marta’s views are shared by many people who live in certain towns and cities that receive large numbers of tourists, such as Malaga, Sevilla and Barcelona.
However, these people do not represent the majority opinion in Spain.
A larger minority of Spaniards believe the numbers of foreign tourists are ‘about right’ (35%) – and a quarter would actually like more of them.
And while nearly three in ten people take a dim view of foreign tourists, 65% actually view them favourably.
Marta denies that her views are a form of ‘tourismophobia’.
“People are talking about this everywhere, at every level, in the Canary Islands, in Marbella, Palma de Mallorca.
“But I don’t call it tourismophobia, I call it neighbour-filia – it’s not about hating tourists, it’s about loving one’s neighbour. We want to change the model to something more sustainable.
“It’s about making sure that your neighbours have access to a dignified way of life.”
