Laurence Dollimore
SPANISH anti-tourism activists are increasingly setting their sights on expats as their anger over rising rents and cost of living soars.
Among the latest targets is Michael Barrymore, 72, who this week revealed he had abandoned his plans to move to Barcelona permanently, having spent the past few months house hunting there.
Popular Instagram page ‘Guiris Go Home’ shared a TikTok video of Barrymore’s and emblazoned it with the message: “Expats go home.”
The video sees the former TV star jokingly walk past the Sagrada Familia while intentionally ignoring it, next to the caption: “Ignoring Sagrada Familia because I’m a local now (I’ve been here two weeks).”
It comes as violent graffiti emerged in Valencia, which simply read ‘die guiri… thank you’, next to a cartoon of a stereotypical British or American tourist.
On April 5, Spanish cities will erupt with protests against the growing housing crisis under the battle cry ‘let’s end the housing racket.’
Barrymore, once a household name in Britain, was shunned from the showbiz world after Stuart Lubbock was found dead in the swimming pool of his Essex home in 2001.
Last November, he announced on TikTok that he had moved to Cataluña and was house hunting in the region, before being spotted with a mystery man in El Paipol, around a 30-minute drive inland from Barcelona.
However he decided to drive back to London with his pet whippet Lara at Christmas, telling his 3.5million followers that he was ‘homesick’.
He said: “You know what Lara, I’m a f***ing mess, so homesick, I’ve never experienced it before.
“I feel insecure, I’m just looking at negatives all of the time because of the way I feel. I can’t stand self pity and what do I do! Self pity. I’ve been doing it for f***ing ages. I’m tired, I feel so unprepared and thinking we can’t do this.”
He added: “I’ve spent the last three days driving back through the middle of France and we’re doing okay now.
“But the last week and at the weekend I wasn’t in a good place at all. My mental health really took a battering and really debilitated me which I didn’t expect at all.
“And I felt so down about giving up on moving to Barcelona, I felt like I let so many people down.”
He concluded: “I’ve decided what I’m going to do instead now is house-hunt from the comfort of my sofa with the iPad and view the houses virtually. Then I’m going to assess if I want to be six months in London and six months in Barcelona, which might work easier for us, but who knows. What I won’t be doing is rushing into it again without a real plan.”
Fresh protests planned across Spain
Locals frustrated with rising housing prices exacerbated by tourist flats, Airbnbs and hotels will take to the streets on April 5 to call for stricter controls on holiday accommodation.
“Everything in recent decades has been done to turn the centre of Malaga into a tourist attraction park that only benefits a few, while expelling its neighbours,” said Kike España, spokesperson for the Malaga protest.
In the lead up to the demonstrations, anti-tourism graffiti has appeared in many popular spots such as Valencia.
Last week, a poster reading ‘die guiri! thanks’ was spotted near the city’s cathedral.
The original image by @nikitadekota shows a woman with a backpack and sunglasses fanning herself as sweat drips from her face. Underneath, the caption reads ‘what’s up guiri?’.
However, someone scrawled the threatening message over the poster, urging tourists to ‘die’.
Clearly a hot topic in the city, another anonymous scribbler then crossed out the message and branded it ‘bad’.
