As tourism in Spain reached record levels in 2023, not everyone is as happy with the inflow of visitors. Locals of popular tourism destinations in particular are complaining over being kicked out of their homes to make room for tourists.
Málaga bar owner Dani Drunko has recently been told to move out of his home of 10 years because the owner plans to transform the property into tourism accommodation. “I live in a neighbourhood of Málaga called Fuente Olletas and was told a few weeks ago the owner wouldn’t be renewing my rental contract. And I had to leave because the property was going to be readapted for tourist lets”, Drunko said.
The news of the local being kicked out of his home started a wave of signs and posters appearing all over the city, telling tourists to go away. Most of the signs are in Spanish, with messages like “a tomar por culo de aquí” (get the fuck out of here), “a tu puta casa” (go back to your fucking house), “apestando a turista” (stinking tourists) , or, in a milder version, “antes esta era mi casa” (this used to be my house) and “antes esto era el centro” (this used to be the [city] centre).
We have nothing against tourists or tourism but are opposed to being kicked out of our homes to make way for tourist apartments.
Dani Drunko, owner of the Drunk-O-Rama bar in Málaga
Other destinations in Spain are also trying to manage the flow of tourists and their behaviour. Visitors to Seville will be fined around €500 euros this summer for walking around in their bathing suits or shorts, without any actual clothes on top. Seville introduced a similar measure last year, while Málaga has been fining shirtless tourists €750 since 2022.
Meanwhile, Mallorca’s Magaluf is cracking down on “aggressive” alcohol consumption. “What I mean by that is happy hours, the sale of cheap alcohol, the two or three-for-ones, the sale of alcohol by supermarkets between 9:30 pm to 8 am, the degradation of women with wild party games in the large pubs. We’ve also banned pub crawls and the advertising of party boats, which are no longer allowed to sell alcohol on board”, said Mayor Alfonso Rodriguez.
Already form the end of 2022, Mallorca announced it would reduce the number of hotel beds available on the island, in a tourism approach shift to “greater value and less volume”. In April last year, Barcelona’s Deputy Mayor compared tourists from cruise ships to a “plague of locusts”, looking to limit the number of cruises anchoring at the city’s ports, after already introducing measures against large groups of tourists in 2022.
The fight against overtourism continued over the course of last summer, with Santiago de Compostela launching a “conscious tourism” campaign, while Mayor Goretti Sanmartín announced plans to introduce a tourist tax in 2025. August saw activists using anti-English sentiment in overtourism campaigns, while, in November, San Sebastián announced plans to ban new hotels and tourist accommodation.
