The protesters and residents pushing back on tourism in Barcelona

As the protesters marched through the central Barcelona on Sunday, they shouted for tourists who filmed them to “go home!”.

Bemused couples sitting in street cafes rotten with water guns and a luxurious shopping shop, stickers declared tourists who would close inside undesirable.

Tourism is extremely important for Spain and Barcelona is a top destination for visitors. But crowds grow so fast that many locals complain to be squeezed out of their own cities.

Here and in popular points across southern Europe, the inhabitants are pushed back.

“We can’t live in this city. They are the most great high due to BNBs, and also to live here and live here in time,” Marina explained, held her own banquet.

She declared “Your Airbnb used to be my home”.

Other signs called for the ban on the giant ships that fit here, with one announces that the city was “killed” through tourism.

“Our goal is not to stop tourism, because it is also good, but to have it at normal rate,” Marina said.

The demonstrate route is wound to one of Barcelona, ​​the Church of the Tovering Sagrada Familia designed by Catalan architect, Gaudi.

The combination of stunning architecture, the sea and the sun attracted more than 15 million visitors to the city last year, almost ten times the local population. No wonder she feels strain.

“We are not against individual tourists, it is about how we drove it,” Elena said, young marine biologist.

“Young people can’t afford live here or even normal things like coffee that are all expensive for our salaries.”

It’s not just a youth fighting.

In 80, Pepi Viu was just kicked out of her house for almost a decade, in a popular neighborhood. He thinks the owner wanted to earn more rent than the pensioner could pay.

Pepi is now in the hostel and looking somewhere more convenient, but the prices have planted almost 70% since it was last rented.

“I can’t find anything – and there’s no support. I feel like I have no protection and it’s disturbing,” she says, guy and leaning against the stick. “Now there are only tourist apartments, but we need to live somewhere!”

In some areas of the city, almost all locals like Peiss are already kicked out.

But in a narrow, paved street of the Gothic quarter, right in the tourist heart of Barcelona, ​​Joan Alvarez is fighting to hold the apartment, his family rented 25 years and at a price he can afford.

His landlord stopped the contract, but Joan refuses to leave.

Most apartments in its building have already been divided into single rooms in order to rare more.

Joan’s small oasis, with paved floors and terraces overlooking the cathedral, is one of the few remain untouched.

“It’s not just about money, it’s a principle,” he explains, cats winding through her plants in pitchers while talking. “This is the central Barcelona and barely one of us stayed now. It should not be that way.”

“Housing should not be a great business. Yes, this is his ownership, but it’s my house.”

Under pressure from protests, the authorities in Barcelona have already taken a radical step of announcing a complete ban on short-term leases on tourists from 2028. years.

10,000 landlord will lose their tourist housing permits.

But Jesus Peda, who owns two popular tourist apartments not far from Sabra Familia, thinks it’s an incorrect answer.

“They stopped giving new licenses 10 years ago, but renting were still worse. So how are we guilty? We are just an enemy” insists only the enemy “

The management of apartments is his job, providing income for himself and his wife. “We have an anxiety now.”

Jesus believes that these are “nomadic” workers who move from somewhere else in Europe that push rents, not tourists. “They earn and pay more. You can’t stop it.”

He claims that tourist apartments like his helping wider crowds and cash, to other areas of town. No tourism believes that Barcelona will have a “existential crisis” – it represents up to 15% of the gross domestic product of Spain (GDP) as a whole.

If he loses his tourism license, Jesus will not take local tenants in any case: Cap Price means long-term rent barely profitable, so it plans to sell both apartments.

The protest in Barcelona culminated by singing “You are all Guirisi!” – Local slang for foreigners – and bang firecrackers. Red smoke was built in front of the rows of police officers who block all the routes on the Sabra Familia.

A little earlier, the crowd targeted the busy hotel, she was hit by Flare in the lobby. Tourists inside, including children, clearly shook up.

There were similar protests in second place in Spain and more crowds in Portugal and Italy: not huge, but loud and insisted.

Concerns are the same and there is no consensus on how best to deal with. But Spain expects more tourists this summer than ever.

Addideal Reporting Esperanz Escriano and Bruno Boelpaep