2024-08-03 14:01:11
As soon as they left the plane, they greeted the tourists in German saying: “Don’t come here again. Limited resources cannot be sacrificed to satisfy your addiction to pleasure.” Even if they sound like that, the sentences were not on a protest leaflet in Mallorca or Gran Canaria this summer, but on a leaflet in Goa, southern India, 35 years ago. .
There the regions also reform the “traveler’s identity”, as it is called in the German press, to draw attention to the negative effects of travel: the high costs of living with low income at home- hospitality work, the displacement of the traditional population and the fear of losing their own identity Fishermen and small farmers lead to barriers – the same reasons that drive Mallorcans, Canarians and Ibicencos to the streets today.
Tourism in Spain, the most visited destination in the world after France, has become unpopular, even if many residents of the Canary Islands or the Balearic Islands still see visitors and their money as a blessing instead of a curse.
But the protests, which have been recurring for weeks, are angry, loud and widespread in the media. Their catchphrases like “tourism” or “Masificación turística,” as it is called in Spanish, are misleading. They suggest that the biggest problem is the number of visitors coming – and that, on the contrary, it can be solved by reducing flight connections or adding partitions.
But a look at the past shows that the number of tourists is only a symptom of the anger, not the cause. Four decades ago, there were no mass tourists to Goa, and even the Alpine residents who protested in the 1970s against the sale of their village houses to the second house owners from the plains fought against those who large numbers, but the types of tourism and. its impact on their lives.
The promise of the shared economy
In recent years, travel has not only grown, it has also changed. It used to focus on specific areas, but did not penetrate into the daily lives of the communities. Today, every tree in which a few retirees sit is a potential place for your own vacation experience. Because who wants to have an experience that everyone else shares, it should be original and “real” – or at least like this in the selfie.
In Spain, where protests are particularly violent and this year there are probably 90 million visitors to 48 million inhabitants, the development is even easier to understand. It’s not just hotels in beach towns that accommodate tourists.
In the capital Palma of Mallorca or in the Barri Gòtic in Barcelona, cheap, unrenovated old apartments have given way to affordable, renovated holiday apartments and luxurious boutique hotels – and with them today’s tourists -a number of Swedish and German early retirees have moved in, who can pay higher rents and property prices than local residents and thus spoil prices.
The promise that Airbnb and other shared economy platforms once made to eliminate the distinction between guests and locals in favor of an authentic experience has been bitterly realized in many areas: guests and visitors have become competitors. – for more infrastructure; about insufficient water for filling ponds and agricultural irrigation; but above all about the living space.
The important issue is the issue of housing
At the core of the protests against tourism are the housing requirements – and now the requirements that have a place and can be designed according to their needs. That’s why the rage has not subsided in tourist resorts like Magaluf or Benidorm with their monofunctional high-rises planned as mansions for sun-starved Europeans.
It is springing up in the interior villages, where estate agents’ offices are spreading where cafes and bakeries used to be. And it flows in the cities, which have become expensive for the waiters and waitresses who have to go to the local area – or directly to the camp site.
They can’t keep up with the price that buyers from afar pay for their position in the sun. The offer depends on what the sellers can achieve with the highest return – this applies to rental buildings that are turned into holiday apartments, and to hardware stores that become souvenir shops and corner bars. that became a vegan cafe.
The complete travel supply of the supply according to the logic of the market economy is not a practical disadvantage for the locals, which anyone who has looked for a pharmacy in a city like Venice knows.
It also gives residents a feeling of losing control over their land, which is more oriented towards the needs of others. When your own city is nothing more than a holiday retreat and the residents’ retirement grounds are shrinking more and more, your identity is also lost.
Growth, but not more prosperity
The tragedy is even greater in the Balearic Islands because the tourism development of the last decades has not led to more prosperity – on the contrary. While the islands were among the fifty richest regions in Europe at the beginning of the millennium, they have now slipped to 138th place. Not enough money that holidaymakers bring to the islands. Most of what guests eat must be imported. The lack of workers means they are re-imported and even wages are eventually lost.
Citizens fear for their identity: Mallorcans demonstrate in front of the balcony with two tourists against mass tourism on their islandReutersThe negative effects of growth are not new, but they have been ignored for many years. The housing problem has been evident for a long time, but instead of cheaper apartments, more hotels are being built. There are ways to prevent competition between visitors and locals in favor of the latter; There are also restrictions for buyers who do not have their primary residence in the country.
In Austria, too, new construction and the purchase of holiday apartments is strictly limited. And in Denmark, foreigners are forbidden by the King to buy if they don’t live there. New York has shown how to put Airbnb in your place – something that, despite all the announcements, Barcelona or Palma cannot do. It is true that most of the citizens sell and rent their properties and houses to foreigners who have the highest support – not to the young family from the neighborhood.
In the past, travelers were welcomed
And yet: If all visitors take the question “traveler go home,” which is on some posters during the announcements, literally, things will look even bleaker on the islands. Without tourism, which is 45 percent of Mallorca’s economic output, nothing works there. Most of the population knows this – and the responsible politicians too.
Even more than objections, they fear that visitors will stay away because they now feel unwelcome. In a recent conference on the future of tourism, the main focus among Mallorcan Mayors is how to convince the population of the benefits of this sector of the economy.
“We used to love tourists and their money, but now we have reached a stage and they are bothering us,” said the mayor of Alcúdia himself. “Our people don’t seem to realize that the tourism industry is funding the entire public sector.”
All teacher salaries and hospital beds are also paid with euros from Great Britain or Germany. And the production of handicrafts, local wine and olive oil, which Mallorcans are proud of, will still be in poor shape without tourists with purchasing power.
So it cannot be “either-or” on the Balearic Islands, but a new balance is needed between the needs of tourists and those who visit. Tourism development in itself is an empty promise if it does not improve the living conditions of local people.
There is no patent solution, but there are promising approaches to guide guests – whether through facilities, luggage storage fees or strict rules for holiday apartments. Cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen and countries like Switzerland and Austria are leading the way.
Unfortunately, Goa is not a good example. Fishermen’s huts have long given way to hotels, hippies have drunk tourists, and at the airport no tourist is given a German brochure anymore. Newbies won’t understand it either. Today they speak Russian more than German.
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