2mo ago

Spaniards packing water pistols blame impact of mass tourism for housing crunch

apnews.com

Spaniards turn water guns on visitors in Barcelona and Mallorca to protest mass tourism

Global News @lemmy.zip

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2mo ago

Spaniards packing water guns blame impact of mass tourism for housing crunch

apnews.com /article/spain-tourism-housing-airbnb-protest-46250dd17afbfcd270e4f951865ae667

Spain @europe.pub

tfm @europe.pub

2mo ago

Spaniards packing water pistols blame impact of mass tourism for housing crunch

apnews.com /article/spain-tourism-housing-airbnb-protest-46250dd17afbfcd270e4f951865ae667

World News @lemmy.world

MicroWave @lemmy.world

2mo ago

Spaniards packing water pistols blame impact of mass tourism for housing crunch

apnews.com /article/spain-tourism-housing-airbnb-protest-46250dd17afbfcd270e4f951865ae667

16 comments

Your problem isn’t tourists. Tourists bring money into your businesses and create jobs for your economy. The problem is shit like AirBnB, no empty housing tax, and no incentives to build new housing. Point those water pistols at your policymakers and get your housing laws changed.
- Yeah I mean I sympathize with people protesting (over-)tourism but it always feels weird when you’re visiting some kind of small village with "Tourist go home" banners hanging from the balconies, meanwhile tourism is obviously the only thing bringing money into the community. Idk.
  
  The problem everybody complains is not tourism but mass tourism, I completely understand it, but it's up to the locals to fix the over demand
- It's not just Airbnb and the likes. Restaurants become more expensive. Shops change to accommodate the needs of people who don't live there.
  Additionally, it creates mostly low qualification jobs and the profits go to large chains who own restaurants, hotels, etc.
  So woke Airbnb is a plague, it's not just that.
“The squirt guns are to bother the tourists a bit,” Andreu Martínez said with a chuckle after spritzing a couple seated at an outdoor cafe. “Barcelona has been handed to the tourists. This is a fight to give Barcelona back to its residents.”
Martínez says his rent has risen over 30% as more apartments in his neighborhood are rented to tourists for short-term stays. He said there is a knock-on effect of traditional stores being replaced by businesses catering to tourists, like souvenir shops, burger joints and “bubble tea” spots.
“Our lives, as lifelong residents of Barcelona, is coming to an end,” he said. “We are being pushed out systematically.”
They have a point. People may dismiss this as “xenophobia” but I see it more as a matter of class divisions where rich tourists are prioritised over lower class residents.
- Yeah, there's a blurry line between hatred against foreigners and fighting back against displacement, and it's vaguely parallel to the line between immigrants trying to integrate and invaders trying to overtake.
  The tourists may have no malicious intent, so things aren't quite as straightforward, but if the end result is that they're contributing to a destructive trend, non-violently bringing attention to that is the best response I could think of.
A city without locals becomes a theme park. Is this the tourists fault? No.
Now to fix this one needs local action with local authorities, limit short term rentals, tax them higher when empty and do like parisians, these taxes go to subsidies on local craftsman and people who give life to the city to live within the city.
Yup. If you've ever lived in or near a tourist destination then you can probably understand why these people are upset.
People are getting ousted from their homes (usually gradually but sometimes abruptly too) in favour of people that don't even live there. It may be as small as a tourist trap displacing a local neighbourhood or as big as short-term rentals and a tourism economy pushing out the lower classes in an entire city.
In the US police would probably fire back with real guns, or charge them with domestic terrorism. To be fair, we do have a lot of cunts in this country that would load the guns up with acid, piss, or American beer - but I repeat myself.
At least some of the protestors know it's the fault of companies like airbnb and similar, and are advocating for restricting them(which is already in the works and was announced last month). They mostly want to limit the amount of private residences being rented out to tourists, to get more reasonable number of visitors.
The ones running around with water pistols and blaming most things on tourists, don't understand very basic economics. Because while cutting off most tourism might indeed lower housing cost quite a bit. It will also massively lower the demand for jobs, salaries will plummet, etc., because so much of their local economy is tied to tourism. So relatively speaking many wont notice a big difference in percentage of salary spent on housing, if they block most tourism.
- Tourists don't necessarily bring that much money to the local economy. Most of the money will be spent on accommodation, which often belongs to people outside the local economy.
  
  Well yeah, the comment you responded to cited AirBnB as one of the biggest problems. That site should just be flat out banned (or massively taxed).
I have never understood the concept of paying loads of money to go somewhere chock full of other people on my precious spare time. So, they want no tourists? Alright then, I'll support their cause by continuing with my policy of spending my vacations around home.
Honestly fuck these people. They should ban all of these cunts harassing tourists from ever leaving their city. If they're so against tourism, then they shouldn't be allowed to be tourists themselves.
If they have a problem with housing go attack politicians and the rich fucks who abuse the system and make the policies, not the tourists who probably have no idea what's going on and are just there visiting.
- unhinged reaction mate
- not the tourists who probably have no idea what's going on and are just there visiting.
  Then they are bad tourists for not checking the state of their destination

16 comments