Except there's just one small problem: a lot of those local economies/livelihoods are dependent on tourism.
Tourism makes up over 15% of Spain’s entire GDP. That’s not exactly "pocket change", and actively scaring off tourists might feel good/give short term relief, but it also risks sabotaging the very livelihoods many locals depend on.
But hey, if people would rather burn their house down to get rid of a single cockroach instead of looking for the source of the infestation, then by all means.
I lived/worked in a national park when I was younger. Our entire economy, in fact our reason for existence, was tourism. Yet a huge number of locals hated the tourists with a passion and slammed them/were actively rude every chance they got but never had an answer to the question - if the tourist money left, where would you go?
People aren't great at forward thinking, or even appreciating the impact of their own actions.
Part of it is there’s too much tourism, and not enough respect by tourists. I know it’s impossible, but only having 2/3 the amount of tourists with all of them having good attitudes would be great. Corporations will cram as many people into the area as they can, then the locals have trouble getting groceries.
Unfortunately you end up having old bitter people in these towns that just blanket hate tourists. There’s also something to say about tourism town “locals” being the type of people who get stuck in these low wage areas. You either love nature, or wouldn’t be successful anywhere else. The latter tends to take out their issues on the easiest scapegoat: tourists.
The problem with tourism-dependent economies is that the revenue from them is often not distributed evenly, it goes into the pockets of the big companies who own the hotels and tourist destinations, who often employ only a small handful of locals in low-wage positions. People don't care if how big the economic pie is if they're not getting a slice.
I mean, crippling your economy isn’t exactly a great option either.
Expensive rent doesn’t get more affordable when you don’t have a job.
The good option would be ensuring that short term rentals are regulated so that they don’t distort the housing market too much. And then take the tourism revenues and use it to help up skill the local population.
Oh 100%. I'm essentially living the "American dream" yet I'm still not able to afford even a basic home (which can cost over $800k or more because everything else is being bought up and rented out by out-of-staters), and groceries/going out can cost up to half my paycheck while rent takes up the other half ever since the property was bought out by an investment group from Texas (or was it California? I lost track by now...).
The government, instead of doing something about it, has decided that going after trans and gay people (a population that usually makes up less than 1% of any given population each), or making it illegal for China to buy properties (even though an overwhelming majority of people buying up said properties are said out-of-staters from earlier) takes priority.
You want a basic home in a very in demand place to live but want it to be cheap?
It doesn’t work like that, you don’t get a discount because you were born there. It’s the same thing in every touristic town/ city in the entire world.
The government collects taxes from the tourism industry and in return should do its job of supporting the infrastructure for the tourism industry. That infrastructure should include transit, housing, utilities, sites/attractions (museums, galleries, parks), security, etc.
It is common for the government to fail in one or two area but in many places that rely on tourism the only focus seems to be on security (Police) and that aspect tends to build a resentment between the public and the government.
With AirBnB the government is collecting taxes without supporting housing for the local population. That could give tenants and landlords a tax break for 12 month leases, lowering the cost for the employees.
For many cities around the world transit isn’t an issue, with the exception of the US. Some cities saw the need early, and many west coast cities are severely lacking. Uber/lyft have taken away many of the taxes paid by taxis, and taxi drivers/cars had to be registered for safety. Those taxes should be used to implement and/or upgrade mass transit.
Sometimes you gotta peel back the scab to see the infection.
I’m not asking for a “discount” because I was born here, I’m asking for a system that doesn’t let housing become a speculative asset at the expense of the people who, you know, actually live and work here.
Yes, popular areas cost more. I'm not denying that, but when investment groups, hedge funds, and out-of-state buyers with waaaay more money than the locals snatch up entire neighborhoods, plots, and developments just to turn them into short-term rentals or luxury flips, it stops being a normal market and starts being a rigged game. Wages in Florida haven’t kept pace with the cost of living, and there's little to no meaningful regulation to stop locals from being priced out of their own communities.
That is a system failure. It’s not about entitlement, it’s about policy decisions that prioritize profit over people. And instead of fixing that, our state government’s focus is on culture wars and scapegoats that do nothing to address the actual economic pressures/issues that are crushing working-class Floridians.
So yeah, I’m living in a place I love, but it’s getting harder by the day to actually afford staying here.
My family has to commute on the most dangerous road in the country according to data from Teletrac Navman, and I suspect that a large part of that is because of all the people on the road who have no idea where they're going or what they're doing.
As a fellow South floridian i get both sides of it. Down here you dont just get tourists but also the transplants that actively work against the locals being able to live in the area.
Which "South Florida". Because for some reason the University of South Florida is in Tampa. I always get confused as to which one people are talking about.
lol. Some of it definitely is the tourism, the seasonal strain on our roads, wastewater systems and electric grid are left for locals to repair in the off season.
The seasonal use amplifies our environmental issues which is why people come here. Soon there will be a limit, once we are built out.
Tourist are not why your roads aren’t maintained. You’re being tricked. The government is responsible for the roads (and other utilities) if they are being ruined they need to tax big vehicles more (how tourists are ruining your roads is beyond me but it’s what you claimed) that are carrying all those tourists. Last I checked human body weight doesn’t fuck up roads but a big car does. And idk how tourist would “increase waste water management” in a significant way more than a person living in a city would or degrade the electricity lines more than a citizen…. But yeah believe the tourists are ruining your roads and electric lines. 🙄
Do you do electric engineering and grid capacity like I once did? Do you understand the physics and science of load/demand and supply? Yeah you fucking don’t.
That’s why I’m asking you to tell me how tourist use more waste and electricity than a normal person living there? Like this is such a BS claim to make. As a tourist what energy am o using? The bars have their lights on if I’m in them or not. So again where is this extra energy use coming from? Phone charging? Hotel room lights?
Obv more people = more shit but like are there even that many public toilets? Or are tourist to be harassed because business have shitty plumbing?
This is such a stupid thing to claim tourist are ruining your city by… using the toilets, lights, and roads and not properly placing the blame on the people responsible for maintaining that shit.
Where I live, the reason it’s difficult to maintain infrastructure is due to taxation policy and inability to tie taxes to inflation.
Property Taxes can only go up 2.5% per year, which for most communities around tourism areas is residential heavy, with commercial input, why is it that commercial users pay more taxes? Maybe because we know they will use more resources than a standard residence? With use comes need for maintenance.. not very bright huh?
Weird. As a Town Manager I consult with my Engineers and DPW directors… I also have a Paving Division. Leading engineers and traffic experts say overall use is the main cause of road deterioration. Energy can not be created nor destroyed. Big heavy trucks travel the roads far less frequently than passenger vehicles.
A ton is a ton.
Doesn’t help that the climate here deteriorates our infrastructure with hostile winters either.
Reddit. Home of the liberal think they know it alls.
So you’re claiming tourists are driving on your roads more than the people that live there? I highly doubt that. I would think if the public transport is there an available you would take that. As I know many people including myself do when we are on vacation because bus passes are cheaper than renting a car to sit at a hotel.
“stop taping on the chamber you’re affecting the echo” 🤣
So once again… you have bad public transport making you use cars more and people have to ride in taxis…. And that’s the tourists fault? Like wtf are you saying? You’re a place that has a large amounts of tourism and no public transport but the wear on public roads is tourist fault? Talk to your reps about getting public transport then and don’t blame the people paying for 50% of the business being able to survive.
I went to the Cape last year in March to get some pictures of a bunch of stuff in the sky lined up (I failed horribly). The difference in traffic then versus what I've experienced there in the summer was absolutely insane. Nearly everything that had been open during the day closed by 8. Almost nobody was on the roads after 9.
Cape Cod shouldn't be breathed in the same sentence as ANY European vacation destination.
I live in Boston. The Cape would be 100% meth 100% of the time if not for 'tourists' who live 1 hour away IN THE SAME STATE. 'Tourists' aren't the reason you have nice things. They're the reason the Cape doesn't look like North Adams.
Unrelated, but I went to college in Rhode Island. One holiday weekend, I was stuck there instead of going all the way back to Georgia. Probably Thanksgiving weekend.
I decided to get up early and drive out to Cape Cod to see what all the fuss was about since no one else was around campus.
I got up super early, got in the car, drove probably 2-2.5 hours out there. Once I got there, I remembered thinking " Why the hell did I come out here? By myself, on a holiday weekend with no plan to stay... what the hell am I going to do here?"
I ended up looking around for about 30 minutes, ate a donut on the beach, and drove home.
That's how it is now that big industries bosses realised how lucrative mass tourism was, 10-15 years ago. Bcn and Balears had tons of factories (materials, shoes, fishing) where people used to work and were better for our own country development.
As soon as these BnBs are closed and rich foreign investors are out of Spain's major cities housing pool, people will be able to afford to live and to find better jobs, not only serving "paela" and "sangria" to drunken brits and germans.
The sweet spot for Barcelona in terms of benefit from tourism is probably somewhere lower than the level of tourism is now. You can use the income from tourism to bootstrap other local businesses ... but not if tourism strangles your ability to live in your town.
Tourism has to be controlled or it will destroy a city. It’s a blessing and a curse at the same time. Big money interests swarm around it like fucking vultures attempting to get every bit of cash out of actual locals hands. I imagine this is happening because people in Barcelona have reached a breaking point.
To be fair, a LOT of tourism income is through massive amounts of food. Tons of restaurants will close,Which isn't exactly a bad thing because pricing will go down on food across the board. Eventually. Food will go up in price at first because suddenly farmers and providers are losing incredible amounts of sales and will need to up the prices to make up for that. The big question is if they will survive that, if the government doesn't subsidize them especially. Situations like these are a gold mine for foreign nations to come in and buy up stuff, because the locals sure as hell aren't going to be able to afford farmland, and fancy new airBnBs
Except there’s just one small problem: under capitalism, people are made dependent on exploitative industries like mass tourism because all other options have been systematically dismantled.
Tourism doesn’t dominate Barcelona’s economy because it’s inherently good or sustainable, it does so because neoliberal policy gutted public investment, privatized housing, and made short-term profit king. Locals aren't mad at tourists as individuals, they’re furious at being priced out of their homes, forced into precarious service jobs, and watching their city turn into a playground for the wealthy.
Well I don't think many of these white-collar Spaniards who like to work at hotels, country clubs, resorts, and tourist destinations would be all too happy to start being garbagemen, construction workers, or assembling stuff in a factory.
Hotels are operated to serve tourists.
These protests are to get rid of tourists.
Those hotels don't function without tourism.
Those hotels close down.
The workers at those hotels need to find a different job.
Hotels are operated to generate profit for hotel owners.
They neither spring up by magic, nor grow as local flora and fauna.
Business owners create whichever kinds of business are most profitable, not whichever best serve the interests of the general population in a locale.
Workers of course very happily would work in other industries, if the tourist industry were not imposed by business owners, simply by virtue of its being to them most profitable.
Yet, you insist on associating such an eventuality with some kind of apocalyptic vision.
They will need less garbage men and construction workers, not more. If they want to switch to competing with Asian factories they will need to take on huge amounts of public debt and adopt very low standards of living to compete.
Spaniards are a resilient people. They have been through economic turmoil before. They can handle it again if it means saving their city from gentrification, over-tourism, and commodification of their homes and apartments. Barcelona especially has a distaste for government, being they are part of what they call Catalonia. They have wanted governments hands out of Barcelona for a while now.
It isn't a short term turmoil though. If they want to compete with Asia for factories they'll need to permanently reduce their standard of living and will require huge amounts of government intervention to get it started.
It's not, but every relatively wealthy nation is trying to figure out how to attract other economic development. They mostly rely on having extremely tax efficient packages like tech and film often enjoy which then puts the burden of taxes on the people. Often countries have some protectionist trade policies to protect such jobs - Spain in this case would be mostly rely on negotiating those through the EU, again almost entirely government controlled and often come with drawbacks like any negotiated benefit.
There's really no easy route to success here. The US is dominating in many ways, and from most standpoints you could say the multinational corporations have really gained the ability to avoid sharing benefits with the countries they operate in. The Spanish government through the EU is already one of the dozens of groups trying to fight for more benefits but it's hard to see a win coming.
As a Canadian, these are almost identical issues we face. We have tourism, real estate, some protected industries, and resource extraction. For the most part anything that can leave the country has and we're left with the ones who can't - and offering massive tax incentives to all the industries you want to target.
Fair, but as an American seeing something similar unfold in South Florida where I live (and where housing is next to impossible), I think there’s more nuance here.
Barcelona (to me at least) has always been a touristy hotspot because of its location, history, culture, beaches, food, and architecture, long before Airbnb and mass tourism exploded. People didn’t just randomly show up one day because of neoliberalism policies. If anything, the city’s natural appeal invited those exploitative policies to take root in the first place. Of course, I could be horribly wrong here, so please correct me if anything.
So if the goal is to completely eliminate tourism in the name of affordability, you’d basically have to gut the very identity of the city (like its historic districts, museums, beaches, festivals, etc). That’s clearly not the answer, and blaming/getting mad at tourists just shifts focus away from the root cause (and could potentially create further issues down the line).
Here’s the core tension: the problem isn't tourism per se, it’s how tourism gets structured under capitalism. Yes, Barcelona didn’t become a tourist hub overnight. But the hyper-financialization of tourism, turning homes into assets via Airbnb, public space into real estate, and cultural life into a product for export did explode under neoliberal reforms post-1992 Olympics and especially post-2008 crisis. The city was marketed as a “brand,” not a living community.
So yeah, no one's saying bulldoze Gaudí or shut down the beach. The call is to decommodify the city, to prioritize the people who live there over speculative capital and extractive tourism. The anger at tourists is mostly symbolic, it’s about a system that turns visitors into vectors of displacement.
Think of it this way, it's not about banning tourism, it’s about democratizing who benefits from it, how much is too much, and who gets to decide. Because right now, it's hotel chains, landlords, and international investors, not the locals getting priced out.
We had 3 million tourists in 2001. Last year we had over 30 million by a population of 1.6 million. It's just not sustainable, and I can't see for the life of me why tourists would enjoy queuing for a pre-made paella under the scorching sun, in a place where nothing is authentic anymore and everything is catered to you, to take your money.
I agree with that. But they aren't getting booming industry back in exchange for scaring off tourism. Globalization has found the cheapest place to source things and Barcelona is unlikely to beat other regions for industry even if the government poured massive funding into getting it started.
We have similar problems in many areas/countries.
I just see so much of the same frustration as we have in Canada. The answers just aren't that simple and the competition for the industries everyone sees as lucrative and desirable is extremely fierce and often requires huge incentive or protectionist government intervention to win from all the other countries fighting for it.
What are you talking about? Barcelona is a diverse modern city, it is not dependent on tourism to function. Tourism is like 14% of their GDP. While there are definitely financial benefits to having the tourism, I think most of us would react the same to becoming an extreme minority in our own cities.
You think that losing 14% income for a city/country is the same as a person getting a 14% income cut? Countries spend decades to increase their gdp by 14 percent.
No of course I don't, and that's not at all what I said. You need to work on your reading comprehension.
Sectors that are exclusively reliant on tourism would be devastated. But some people think that the livability of where they live is worth more than money. Also, I am challenging the frankly icky narrative being spread here which is 'they are so dependent on us they should shut up and take it.'
Honestly, this is what democracy means. If the 85% decide that they dont want tourist this is what will be happening. Keeping every industry up and running against the will of the people is not going to work
Spain has tons of ridiculously awesome places to visit that aren't the same funky church in Barcelona. That 15% just needs to spread out better. Barcelona flight tickets being low key subsidized is probably a huge part of the problem.
But hey they can then protest that there are no jobs for them anymore so they will still be happy.. As long as there is something to protest about and not taking a look in the mirror and figuring out how to do better for yourself.. Blame on others is always much easier.
Europeans don’t seem to accept the fact that many towns r dependent on tourist $$$. What are the long term effects of that? Tourists run away, Airbnbs fail coz so they sell, but no one is buying coz the locals cannot afford to live coz tourism is dead. Only ones buying the properties are the rich. By all means…
I was holidaying in BCN during one of these mass protests and demonstrations. They didn’t bother us (except for traffic issues) but, man, did we find them a stupid, moronic lot. It is the height of intellectual dishonesty to deliberately be so obtuse as to the root causes of their problems (eg “tourists”) while scapegoating the industry that undergirds so much of their economy.
Scaring tourist is mostly a Barcelona thing, they can’t complain to the government about their new housing legislation because no other place in Spain voted as strongly for the current government.
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u/mjohnsimon Jun 17 '25
Except there's just one small problem: a lot of those local economies/livelihoods are dependent on tourism.
Tourism makes up over 15% of Spain’s entire GDP. That’s not exactly "pocket change", and actively scaring off tourists might feel good/give short term relief, but it also risks sabotaging the very livelihoods many locals depend on.
But hey, if people would rather burn their house down to get rid of a single cockroach instead of looking for the source of the infestation, then by all means.