310
submitted 4 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

Protesters in Barcelona have sprayed visitors with water as part of a demonstration against mass tourism.

Demonstrators marching through areas popular with tourists on Saturday chanted “tourists go home” and squirted them with water pistols, while others carried signs with slogans including “Barcelona is not for sale.”

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the city in the latest demonstration against mass tourism in Spain, which has seen similar actions in the Canary Islands and Mallorca recently, decrying the impact on living costs and quality of life for local people.

The demonstration was organised by a group of more than 100 local organizations, led by the Assemblea de Barris pel Decreixement Turístic (Neighborhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth).

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] EldritchFeminity 10 points 4 months ago

They didn't say that it doesn't create jobs. They said that it creates poor paying jobs. Which it does. All those restaurants and shops and guides are low wage jobs, and often, only seasonal jobs as well.

In the vacation town I grew up in, up to 50% of businesses were closed 8 months out of the year. In these kinds of areas, tourism isn't a boost to the economy. It is the economy. It eats it up until there's almost nothing left. Any industry that doesn't serve the tourism is pushed out by the high profit margins of only being open long enough to service the seasonal tourism. I used to work at a fish market in that town that stayed open all year, and outside the tourist season, the boss reduced the hours to half of what they were during the tourist season. Because he couldn't afford to keep the business running full-time. The store ran at a loss 8 months out of the year, and the busiest day of the tourist season largely kept the place open the rest of the year. It would've been more profitable for him to close down, but he stayed open because he didn't want his local customers and employees to go somewhere else.

Most of the towns in that county are tourist towns, and that county has the highest rates of drug addiction in the state and huge homelessness problems. Because there's very little to do most of the year since everything is closed, and combine the seasonal labor/low wage tourism industry with the housing stock being bought up by wealthy people for their vacation homes or Air BnBs while apartments prioritize short-term seasonal rentals because of how much more they can charge, and locals can't afford to live in town anymore. There's one town there that has a year-round population of 2,000 and can see up to 60,000 people there in the summer. And anybody I've ever talked to who has lived in a vacation town has cited the exact same issues consistently - high rates of poverty, homelessness, and drug use/addiction.

this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
310 points (100.0% liked)

World News

38979 readers
1860 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS