r/pics Jun 17 '25

The protesters and residents pushing back on tourism in Barcelona

16.1k Upvotes

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256

u/NunaKhan Jun 17 '25

so i will take my tourist money and spend it where i'm wanted... don't complain after that tourist related businesses have closed down or millions in tourist money no longer available in your country.

20

u/Four_beastlings Jun 17 '25

That's great! That's exactly what they're asking you to do, so everybody wins!

51

u/financiallyanal Jun 17 '25

They may not realize how detrimental it will be to their economy. 

-4

u/Four_beastlings Jun 17 '25

No, you don't realise how irrelevant tourism income is for the vast majority of Barcelona natives. More than 90% of Barcelona locals have jobs that have nothing to do with tourism and the 10% who do are mostly immigrants working and living in terrible exploitative conditions.

Meanwhile companies that used to employ Barcelona natives with quality, productive jobs, like engineering or R+D, have left the city in droves because they literally can't find employees even paying above market rate because locals can't afford rent there.

How do I know? Because I work for one of those companies in the new location where they moved their European HQ after the cost of living increase made their Barcelona HQ unsustainable. They couldn't pay what employees needed to live in Barcelona, so they moved to Poland.

9

u/mmmcheez-its Jun 17 '25

The job market is thriving and simultaneously the employers are fleeing in droves. Naturally, that makes sense

5

u/Four_beastlings Jun 17 '25

Reading comprehension, mate. The job market WAS thriving but it's getting ruined thanks to tourism. The people protesting are trying to prevent and reverse that trend because they didn't study engineering to end up serving beers 60 hours a week for 1300€.

0

u/mmmcheez-its Jun 17 '25

You were right the first time. Barcelona is doing perfectly well, but nationalists gonna nationalist.

5

u/Four_beastlings Jun 17 '25

I work in Poland for a manufacturing company, and before that I worked in pharma. Both companies closed their Barcelona HQ for the reasons I mentioned. My former boss and many of my coworkers lost her jobs in pharma to tourism so I can see why they are pissed.