"Southern Europe against Overtourism" - Residents demand measures to protect communities from the "crowd" of visitors
Thousands of people took to the streets of cities in Southern Europe to protest against overcrowding, shooting water guns at shop windows and lighting smoke bombs.
"Your holidays, my misery," chanted protesters in the streets of Barcelona as they held up banners with slogans such as "mass tourism kills the city" and "their greed brings us ruin."
United by the "Southern Europe Against Overtourism" alliance, protesters joined forces with groups in Portugal and Italy, arguing that uncontrolled tourism was driving up housing prices and forcing people out of their neighborhoods.
Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million people, attracted 26 million tourists last year. Authorities in the northeastern Spanish city said about 600 people joined the demonstration.
Similar movements were also seen in other parts of Spain, including Ibiza, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca, San Sebastian and Granada. Protests in Italy took place in cities such as Genoa, Naples, Palermo, Milan and Venice. Portuguese citizens also filled the streets of Lisbon to express concerns about the negative impacts of overcrowding on their daily lives.
In Barcelona, the city government said last year it would ban renting out apartments to tourists by 2028 to make the city more livable for residents.
"I'm so tired of being superfluous in my city. The solution is to propose a radical reduction in the number of tourists in Barcelona and create another economic model that brings prosperity to the city," said one citizen, rejecting the common counterargument that tourism brings jobs and income.
International travel spending in Europe is expected to rise by 11% to $838 billion this year, with Spain and France among the countries set to attract record numbers of tourists.
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