Barcelona hates Tourists....?

[AnnMeredithPerkins]

www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/barcelona-locals-hate-tourists-why-reasons-spain-protests-arran-airbnb-locals-attacks-graffiti-a7883021.html

Surely without tourist money they would be in a bit of a hole? I get they have too many tourists and its making it expensive, but should they really be making visitors angry with their graffiti and beach protests?

If i saw this picture about a place i was planning to visit - i'd change my mind

From the article above
"Imagine you’re walking down the street in the city you’ve been dying to visit for months, or even years. You’re in a good mood because you’re on holiday; the sun seems to shine brighter than usual and life feels good. But then you turn a corner and stumble upon a piece of graffiti that reads: “Tourist you are the terrorist".

You ignore it, attributing it to some angry guy with a sad life who probably doesn’t get out all that much. But a few metres ahead you see another troubling line: “All tourists are bastards”.

A few steps further on: “Stop destroying our lives!” And after that: “Why call it tourist season if we can’t shoot them?”

Saw that. And they have nothing on the galicians. I have a galician friend and his extreme denial of any spanish identity is a bit startling!

Not nice for the tourists but I must admit that the locals have my sympathies. Tourism gives with one hand and takes with the other.

'Landlords are seeing an opportunity to gain up to four times as much as they would for renting to long-term local tenants, and 40 per cent of Barcelona’s tourist apartments are illegal. This is leading to a shortage of housing for those who live and work here and driving up rents, which increased by 16.5 per cent in 2016.'

Their home city is becoming more expensive and more gentrified by the month. All to pander to the tourist $ and £.

They probably look at somewhere like Venice, which must be an intolerable place to live, and worry that it's happening to their city unless they try and do something.

But obviously it's up to the Spanish government to come up with solutions as aggression towards tourists isn't going to solve anything.

But does the govt have any sympathy with them?

Ah, I see they are taking measures.

'the local government, which has acknowledged the situation and taken measures to try and contain it. Besides the tourist tax applied to accommodation for spending the night in the city, the licensing and building of new accommodation (hotels, hostels and apartments) has been paralysed since 2015, and earlier this year a special urbanism plan for tourism (PEUAT) was passed, whereby the licensing of tourist accommodation is restricted depending on the area. The aim is to distribute tourists more evenly throughout the city and decongest the most central and affected districts.'

Don't you mean "a few people in Barcelona hate tourists, many people though enjoy making money from them so like them, and the majority don't really give a crap either way"?

Why call it tourist season if we can’t shoot them?

I used to live and work in a tourist-heavy area most of my life. We locals used to say the above all the time - many tourists are rude, ignorant, entitled and think that their spending money excuses all of the above and more. However, living in such areas, you have to learn to 'grin and bare it', as quite rightly telling people you can't stand tourists puts them off. The signs are rude, but I can certainly understand the frustration behind them.

It isn't about the tourists (the bus vandals were disaffected youth wing of a political party, we have them in the basque country too and they jump on any old cause for an excuse to spray paint something).

But it's true that air bnb has created a problem in both cities mentioned. In san Sebastián where i live, my rent equals my brother in london (salary obviously doesn't!) And the air bnb flats in my block charge per week what we pay per month. Also we get the residents confusing doors and trying to get into our flat at 3am which is terrifying, especially for our children. It's a little uncomfortable as an expat seeing "tourists go home" scrawled everywhere but it is just twats jumping on a quite reasonable bandwagon.

Everyone should stop going and give them what they want, when all the shops bars restaurants etc close and people start losing their jobs they will be begging tourists to come back

sorry, i mean it's the effects of
unchecked tourism rather than the individual tourists.

I wonder if the way it makes us (potential tourists) feel is similar to how eu migrants feel about the brexity folk shouting about immigrants going home/being terrorists when the real problem is a far more reasonable worry about effects of unchecked immigration.

thing is trinity Barcelona and San Sebastián aren't Benidorm or Ibiza, most residents being priced out of their barrios don't have anything to do with tourists. they are lawyers, teachers, pharmacists, engineers etc. Their jobs don't depend on tourism but their lives are negatively impacted by it. It's telling that it's the two wealthiest cities by madrid that are protesting and not the tourist resort hubs

It's the same thing I guess that any fashionable place gets. The locals get priced out of the market to second home owners in lots of lovely parts of our country too.

I was in Majorca this summer and there were too many people. Beaches and sea were polluted, nowhere to park, you can see why the locals don't like it.

Air BnB is a huge problem, especially in popular Spanish cities - I lived in Madrid for 10 years and by the time DD and I moved back to the UK, average rents had skyrocketed from when we first moved into our flat because of the upsurge of AirBnB type rentals. In our building, which was right in the centre of the city - 10 minutes walk to Gran Via/Sol/Plaza Mayor - there was 10 floors, 3 flats on each floor so 30 flats in total. When we moved in they were all residential properties, either lived in by the owners or rented long term. When we moved out 9 of those properties were being used as AirBnB/short term rentals and it was chaos as they often had no respect for the other residents and there were always noise complaints.

Also people on holiday tend to forget that other people aren't ... it's one thing when they're in a hotel and it's almost guaranteed that everyone else in the building will be there on holiday too but some people come to AirBnB properties and forget that their neighbours still have to get up for work in the morning and get their kids to school, and unlike a hotel there is no reception/front desk for us to make a complaint to and have it sorted asap, without dealing with it ourselves.

Then of course you have the fact that a residential apartment building is not designed for travellers, like a hotel is, there just aren't the same facilities, or even signagae, so like PPs I have had drunk holiday makers trying to get into my flat at 3am (when I had to be up at 6:30 for work) because they had forgotten which door was their rental flat and hadn't noticed that they were trying to get into 5C, not 5B

Tourists are irritating sometimes though, when there's a cruise ship in so the high street's packed and you can barely fight through the crowd, or people on longer stays driving really dodgily because they're not used to the roads, or that twat customer I had a few years back bitch about her parking ticket because don't we know how much money we get from tourists?

AirBnB has caused the same problem in London. Many potential rental properties taken out of circulation by landlords who can make more this way. And there has been a scandal about people in social/council housing renting their properties via AirBnB against the rules of their lease. This has been clamped down in but I bet plenty still get away with it. I haven't graffitied a bus stop yet.

Oh and the French cycling on the tiny pavements because that's what they do at home.

I think its incredibly short sighted of an area where tourism is the prime contributor to their GDP to allow anti tourist slogans to be left in place and read.

what do these people think that their home town will look like without tourists? certainly in the UK it would be no pub, no post office, fewer places to eat out etc.

I get that tourists cause of lot of disruption to daily life but some of these people need to go and speak to areas where tourism has died over night to see the wide spread effects of the loss. its not just the primary spend on accommodation and food but secondary spends on things like builders, cleaners, repair workers etc.

the issues around airbandb are something else. really, if you book through them then there is no guarantee that the place you rent has proper fire safety, gas safety etc. everyone wants more for cheaper and don't realise the compromise in safety that this brings.

Airbnb has turned into a bit of a monster hasn't it? People want to stay in local apartments to get the real feel for a city but the more people who do this the quicker the 'real' city erodes.

Barcelona doesn't hate tourists. But tourists belong in holiday accommodation, not in airbnb in Barcelona. This particular city has a major space/population issue so tourists taking up living space is not the way to go. The government/city need to stop this happening as Barcelona is becoming nightmarish for its residents. I have a friend who was born there, lived there her whole life and has now moved away.

Hmm, I went to Barcelona about 15 years ago and loved it, stayed just off the Ramblas, visited all the main sights, had a wonderful time. I went again two years ago with my children and stayed in a similar location, again visited all the must-sees and loved it but, my God, it was RAMMED (this was the week before Easter so not the height of the season). I am well aware that I am part of the problem but it was unpleasantly crowded at certain places (la Boqueria, which I had loved visiting the first time, was almost impossible to get into; the Sagrada Familia was extremely busy; the queue outside the Picasso museum stretched down the street etc). I don't blame the Barcelona locals for getting a bit fed up - apart from the noise and the crowds, it is unhealthy to be so reliant on a single and quite fickle industry.

It's the type of tourists, though. A couple of weeks a video surfaced of tourists having sex in broad daylight in a children's playground. I don't think you would like that in your home town.
Barcelona is a capital city with a lot going on, and it has other sources of income. We can afford to lose some tourists, especially the younger ones and the cruise ship passengers who don't spend much anyway.

Mass tourism kills the very places that attract it.

Don't you mean "a few people in Barcelona hate tourists, many people though enjoy making money from them so like them, and the majority don't really give a crap either way"?

It's not a few. We live in Barcelona and have done for over a decade. We are now moving out, as are many others, because rents have got crazy. We don't go anywhere near the center during tourist season because of the drunk and rowdy tourists.
It's horrible, and the government are doing too little too late.

We can afford to lose a lot of tourists and it would make it nicer for everyone.

Funnily enough when I was in Barcelona I took this photograph.

It's certainly a tricky situation but I'm guessing the same happens in all big tourist destinations to a certain extent. Is the housing situation in London down to similar issues partially?

the problem lies with the government allowing properties to be rented through airbnb.

really don't understand why the UK cant see what is happening in spain and do something about it here before its too late. airbnb properties don't have to prove that they have a fire risk assessment or insurances. people are letting or sub letting their properties through airbnb and not paying tax on the income, business rates for the property, business refuse disposal costs etc.

Its really easy to clamp down on it. make it illegal to let out your home without a licence. this would apply to landlords letting properties full time and to holiday lets.

people with proper holiday lets must be tearing their hair out that they are being undercut by airbnb where basically they don't care if you do or don't comply with the various safety regulations.