Tourism is important to the Spanish economy but critics are arguing the country is too reliant on it.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
What's not to love about Spain? - Barcelona, Toledo, Madrid, 5,000 miles of coastline, paella, Rioja. But as Miguel Macias reports, some locals feel like their country is overloved.
MIGUEL MACIAS, BYLINE: Let me start by sharing an anecdote, something that happened to me recently. I was visiting Madrid for a conference, so I figured I would stay for the weekend with the family. One night after putting the baby to sleep at our Airbnb apartment, I went outside to wait for a delivery. That's when I noticed a pink, round sticker on the building's intercom. It read, this used to be my home. And then hashtag, curse word that I can't say on the radio, Airbnb.
PICU: (Through interpreter) About two years ago, a good friend of mine saw her building being sold to an investment fund that was going to turn her entire building into housing for tourists.
MACIAS: That's Picu. She's the person who makes the stickers I saw in Madrid. We're not using her last name because what she does could be considered vandalism. That friend Picu is talking about had to leave her apartment after the new owner started construction and made the building uninhabitable for her and her partner.
PICU: (Through interpreter) And I said, we need to do something. People need to know that they are kicking us out of our apartments. I think it's important that Airbnb users learn that they are staying at places that used to be people's homes. They're turning our cities into theme parks.
MACIAS: Picu is not alone in feeling this way. In fact, she's now a part of a national movement that is protesting what they say is the negative impact that mass tourism is having on Spanish cities. In 2023, more than 85 million people visited the country. So in 2024, we've seen the reaction to that with protests in Madrid, Malaga, the Canary Islands and, of course, Barcelona.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Tourists, go home. [inaudible] Tourists, go home.
MACIAS: During this protest, on July 6 in Barcelona, some participants used water guns to target tourists. That surely caught the attention of the media.
DANIEL PARDO: (Through interpreter) Well, this is a bit silly, but given the attention, they're giving us reasons to use water guns again. By the way, this wasn't really organized. It was improvised by some of the protesters.
MACIAS: Daniel Pardo is a member of a neighbor's assembly that fights mass tourism. They helped organize that protest in Barcelona. Pardo cites problems with health, the environment, income inequality and simply the fact that the city is not welcoming to its own people anymore. But above all...
PARDO: (Through interpreter) The impact that worries us the most at this point is the impact in housing access, which is the most serious social problem that we face, not only in Barcelona but in other cities in the country.
MACIAS: In some neighborhoods, in the historic center of cities like Seville, there is more housing for tourists than for locals. That means locals are pushed to other areas away from the city center. But in some cases, that is not even possible, like in the Canary Islands, the Spanish archipelago off the coast of northwestern Africa.
ALFONSO BOULLON: (Through interpreter) We have grown exponentially, without any control, without any kind of plan and, in some cases, even breaking the law.
MACIAS: Alfonso Boullon is a spokesperson for an ecologist grassroots organization in the Canary Islands. He says that some of the urban development on the islands breaks environmental laws.
BOULLON: (Through interpreter) In the Canary Islands, there are many hotels that have an order to be demolished, and they're not demolished because the local government lobbies in favor of the economic interest instead of enforcing the law.
MACIAS: But Alfonso Boullon also makes something clear.
BOULLON: (Through interpreter) We are not against tourism. We are all tourists at some point. We love to travel and see the world. The problem is the magnitude of the industry, the model that we are following.
MACIAS: Picu in Madrid, the woman who made those stickers to post them around town - she disagrees.
PICU: (Through interpreter) We all complain about tourism, but we should all travel less. We need to exercise some self-control, as well.
MACIAS: Whether it's all about less tourism or more about self-control, activists in Barcelona, Madrid, the Canary Islands and many other Spanish cities are not done protesting. But with tourism making up about a tenth of economic growth and 1 in 10 jobs, Spain's economic reliance on the sector will be difficult to undo.
For NPR News, I'm Miguel Macias in Seville, Spain.
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