The movement against overtourism is sweeping Southern Europe

This article The movement against overtourism is sweeping Southern Europe was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

On Sunday, residents gathered in Barcelona under the hot midday sun armed with water guns, smoke bombs and an ardent desire to take back their city from the tourist hordes descending on it this summer. They marched through the luxury shopping district of Passeig de Gràcia to the shadow of Guadí’s Sagrada Familia cathedral in protest of Barcelona’s “touristification”: the restructuring of urban life in service of the tourism industry. 

Their slogan “Tourism robs us of our food, shelter and future. Tourist degrowth, now!” gets at the heart of the labor, housing and environmental crisis brewing in Europe’s second-most-visited city. The protest was coordinated via the Southern Europe Against Touristification Network, or SET, with others that took place the same day in a dozen cities in Portugal, Spain and Italy. 

The Barcelona march, organized by the Assembly of Neighborhoods for Tourist Degrowth, or ABDT, included Las Kellys (a hotel cleaners worker collective), public transit workers, Gaudí’s Park Güell residents and staff, and Zeroport (a coalition opposing airport expansion), among others. Protesters held signs reading “Barcelona is not for sale” and chanted slogans like “wherever you look, they’re all guiris.” Guiris are foreign tourists, usually from Northern Europe or the U.K.

Kicking off the march, ABDT spokesperson Daniel Pardo set out a carton of water guns — a nod to the images from last summer’s protest seen round the world of demonstrators dousing tourists. This year, protesters used them once again on tourists who got within range of the march, including an American in a MAGA hat. But mostly the demonstrators sprayed each other to keep cool. 

Despite these toys, the mood on Sunday was defiant. Protesters stopped at key sites, spraying the facades with water guns, setting off smoke bombs and cordoning them off with caution tape. There was a confrontation at The Generator hostel when staff attempted to remove the tape with scissors. The march was stalled by a police cordon as it approached Sagrada Família, but after negotiations they were allowed to conclude a block from the cathedral.

The anti-tourism movement has grown over the last decade, especially in cities in Southern Europe, which Pardo described as “the rest of the world’s vacation playground.” Barcelona received 26.1 million tourists in 2024, over 15 times its population of 1.7 million. While it may appear only natural that millions would be drawn to the region’s crystal blue coves, Pardo argues that the flow of tourists is the product of global economic forces and political choices. Following the 2008 recession and harsh austerity measures, many Southern European countries (referred to during this time as PIGS: Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) turned to tourism as an economic lifeline, leading to the creation of what he and others call a tourist monoculture.

However, the prosperity that tourism was supposed to bring never came. There is a growing consensus — graffitied across historic walls all over Europe with the tag “Tourist Go Home” — that overtourism raises rents, wreaks havoc on services and devastates the environment in exchange for precarious employment. Members of the SET Network believe mass tourism encompasses the failures of the global economic model, demonstrated by the fact that workers in the tourism industry can’t afford rent in housing markets inflated by tourist accommodations. 

“SET’s message is resonating: all tourist territories are suffering from the same dynamics,” said Margalida Ramis, spokesperson for Balearic Ornithological Group and a coalition of activists and collectives called Less Tourism, More Life. 

Pardo believes the pandemic contributed to the movement’s strength in Barcelona. While all sectors suffered, tourism disappeared entirely in 2020 and the economy tanked. Yet, he said, the pause allowed people to reclaim “spaces and traditions that had been lost for decades,” leading them to take note of the industry’s impacts in a new way. When mass tourism returned post-pandemic “with a vengeance,” the rapid loss of those spaces reignited the movement.

Tourism and the housing crisis

Manuel Martin, a member of the SET Network affiliate Movement for Housing Referendum, in Lisbon, reported that in his neighborhood of Santa Maria Maior, 70 percent of the housing stock is licensed for short-term accommodation. Without long-term residents, corner stores and affordable cafés have lost out to brunch spots and souvenir shops. 

Martin explains that Lisbon’s sporting and cultural associations, which are “open to people, irrespective of whether they have the ability to consume,” are under threat as landlords prefer to rent to more lucrative clients. Sirigaita, a club used by Movement for Housing Referendum for organizing, is slated for eviction. Its website reads, “time is running out and the life of (yet another) collective space is in the hands of so-called ‘justice.’”

Ramis said that in Spain’s Balearic Islands, teachers don’t reach the end of term before they’re kicked out of their rentals for tourist season and end up “finishing the semester living in a van.” Professionals refuse positions in education, health care and law enforcement because they can’t afford the cost of living. “Vacancies go unfilled because people can’t afford to pay for housing, or it’s simply impossible to find in the first place. … The crisis has escalated and reached more layers of society who, until now, thought it wouldn’t affect them. Now it is.” 

Comparing the housing situation this tourist season to the last one, Maria Cardona of Let’s Change Course, a coalition for tourism degrowth and SET affiliate in Ibiza, said, “Nothing has changed — in fact, I’d say it’s gotten worse, because there are now more shantytowns and settlements.” To fight back, the coalition collaborates with the local tenants union on protests and advocacy. “We’re dealing with the same issues, so it makes sense for us to work together.”

When it comes to housing, the rise of short-term housing platforms has been central to the anti-touristification movement since its inception. In 2016, the ABDT booked an illegally operated Airbnb in Barcelona, staged a symbolic occupation, and called in municipal inspectors along with the press. “It made a lot of noise,” Pardo recalled. They took advantage of the press coverage to release an exposé showing how one host was illegally renting out entire buildings on Airbnb under multiple listings, demonstrating the inconsistencies behind the tech company’s rhetoric that its purpose was to help locals earn extra income. 

The next year, the city passed the Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodation, or PEUAT, which has been the city’s main tool for regulating tourist housing. Though beset with legal setbacks and enforcement challenges, housing researchers estimate that without the PEUAT, the number of legal tourist apartments would be double the current total. In 2024, Barcelona’s mayor, Jaume Collboni, announced plans to eliminate the remaining 10,000 tourist apartments by 2028 to increase the long-term housing stock. And in May, Spain’s Consumer Affairs Ministry ordered Airbnb to remove close to 66,000 listings that it says violate legal requirements. Airbnb has yet to remove any listings and said it will appeal the decision.

Stealing the bread off our table

If you ask Ramis, there’s no end to the number of limits that the political class could enact now. Mallorca’s Less Tourism, More Life has put forward proposals to limit the number of tourist beds, flights, passengers, cruises, rental vehicles and a ban on short-term tourist rentals. 

But even were they to accept all these limits, it would not be enough, according to Ramis. “A society cannot be structured around a single economic sector, because this makes us both overly dependent on its constant growth and extremely vulnerable if it fails,” she said.

Supporters of tourism point to the jobs it creates, but activists say the conditions of the work (low pay and seasonal contracts) cause more harm than good. Ramis reported that in Mallorca they have been working for years to bridge the gap between activists and workers and improve their relationship with the unions that have the most influence in the industry. Workers’ Commissions and the General Workers’ Union originally saw the movement as a threat. The unions “attacked us when we presented our demands,” she said. 

Despite the challenges, she said, “we were very clear that when we organized protests against overtourism, without the workers from that sector there, it would be kind of a failure.” They worked to include worker perspectives and overcome the perception that criticizing tourism is a luxury for those who don’t depend on it.

Last year, for the first time, both unions got involved in supporting the demonstration, and this year they have gone further with more official backing. The General Workers’ Union, which has the most workers in the industry, is renegotiating the hospitality sector’s labor agreement and Workers’ Commissions launched its own campaign to address touristification and link it to the enrichment of business owners. “This makes us very happy,” Ramis said. “We have been trying to build this connection for a long time, and now it is happening naturally and organically.”

Tourism’s environmental impacts

The proposed expansion of El Prat airport, announced just days before Sunday’s protest, comes as a serious blow to the movement in Barcelona. Greenlit by the Catalan and Spanish governments, it aims to lengthen the runway by over 1,600 feet, part of which would extend into the protected La Ricarda wetlands. It also says a lot about the government’s stance on tourism.

“It would mean at least 10 million more visitors,” Joan Manel del Llano, member of Zeroport, a coalition of environmental groups opposing the plan, wrote in an email. “So, more pressure on housing, on basic and vital resources like energy and water, more global and local warming, more crowds, more waste.” 

Worldwide, the tourism sector is responsible for 8.8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, mostly from air travel, along with severe water and waste impacts from cruise ships. The airport has been a catalyst for mass resistance in the past. In 2021, the announcement of a similar airport expansion sparked a massive protest that drew at least 10,000 participants and 300 groups. While the plan was officially suspended before the scheduled protest due to disagreements between the regional and national government over the protection of La Ricarda, the thousands of demonstrators wanted to ensure it was truly dead. 

Zeroport is preparing another demonstration on June 28 and a July conference on reducing aviation. Its network includes groups like Ecologists in Action and the ABDT, as well as international coalitions such as Stay Grounded. 

Organizing half a continent

The shape of the anti-tourism movement is a series of fractalized collectives working together but independently. For example, the neighborhood association in Barcelona’s Vallcarca neighborhood that participated in Sunday’s protest is affiliated with the citywide platform ABDT, which in turn is affiliated with the SET Network, along with collectives in Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza and Formentera, Donostia, the Canary Islands, Lisbon, Venice and more. 

“It works quite chaotically, and at the same time quite well,” Pardo said. The geographic spread makes coordination challenging, but it also deepens their understanding of the issues. “We share problems, diagnoses, proposals,” he explained. Together, they have developed the view that “it’s not just about reducing the impact of tourism — it’s about changing the economic model.”

Maider Uralde from BiziLagunEkin, which means “With the Neighbors” in the Basque language, said the network makes her group stay connected and proactive. “It helps us overcome the feeling of isolation and better understand how to confront touristification,” she wrote in a statement. Places like Venice and Barcelona offer cautionary tales, but also strategies. “What’s happened in those places helps us stay ahead of the tourism industry’s tactics.”

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Sunday’s protests were the first SET-wide action since its formation around 2017. Another mobilization may take place in September to coincide with World Tourism Day. In the meantime, the various platforms are focused on local organizing. In Mallorca, Less Tourism, More Life continues to hold public talks and training sessions to build support for structural change. In Donostia, With the Neighbors is planning to combat the effects of the summer tourist season with workshops and street actions centered on the importance of community life. And in Barcelona, ABDT and Zeroport are preparing to resist the airport expansion.

While many activists remain frustrated by the slow pace of political change, most agree that public discourse around tourism has evolved significantly. “In 2017, when discontent first surfaced, it was stigmatized and dismissed,” Uralde said. “Now, the idea that tourism in Donostia can’t keep growing is common sense.”

For Pardo, this shift in narrative is the most important achievement of the movement so far. Still, he’s skeptical that awareness alone will drive real change. “What we need is to reduce the market,” he said. Relying on cultural shifts alone to fix these problems would take “centuries we simply don’t have.”

This article The movement against overtourism is sweeping Southern Europe was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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