Spain deals with ‘anti-tourism sentiment’
AS Spain heads for elections, tourism has taken centre stage with some calling for more regulation amid growing antitourist sentiment, according to state news agency EFE.
The country has witnessed a post-pandemic boom with the return of mass tourism.
Cities such as Sevilla, Barcelona and San Sebastián have rolled out measures in a bid to contain the impact of tourism on locals by targeting apartments operating illegally without licences. Tourism lets have taken over local real estate markets, sending prices rocketing and pushing residents further out of city centres.
According to EFE, ‘more and more regions in Spain look poised to clamp down on Airbnb-style lettings’.
The Canary Islands is the most recent regional government to have slapped fines on unlicensed flats. In the Basque Country, the government has temporarily suspended new licences for hotels and tourist apartments, while in Valencia authorities have restricted the number of tourist flats in the historic centre.
EFE stated that the issues have conflated into what some analysts have dubbed ‘tourismphobia’, a term coined in 2017 by the university of the Balearic Islands which described it as ‘a feeling of rejection by the residents of a tourist destination towards people who come to visit it’. The university added that the anti-tourism sentiment was not towards individual tourists but towards mass tourism in general.
“Uncontrolled mass tourism ends up destroying the very things that made a city attractive to visitors in the first place,” Barcelona mayor Ada Colau wrote in a 2014 Guardian opinion piece.
In 2022, Barcelona joined forces with Amsterdam city council to fight tourism overcrowding and to source sustainable policies for tourism development.
Unlicensed tourism apartments have long been a bone of contention for residents in tourist towns such as Benidorm and Torrevieja, where partying visitors can make life hell for the people who live nearby.
The tourism sector accounts for more than 12% of Spain’s GDP and is one of the mainstays for employment in Alicante province.