As Brits abroad are faced with furious graffiti and water pistols, overtourism protesters have explained why exactly visitors may have gotten the wrong end of the stick about their defiant message
Across southern Europe, holidaymakers are being greeted by graffiti bearing the slogan, ‘tourists go home’ – but there’s more to these furious signs than meets the eye.
Brits sunning themselves over in the Mediterranean may not currently be receiving the warmest welcome, with furious overtourism protesters having taken to the streets in force, brandishing water pistols.
The protests have spread across a number of holiday hotspots, with Spain, Portugal and Italy, with a number of unfortunate sunseekers finding themselves at the receiving end of a squirt.
After spritzing a couple seated at an outdoor Barcelona café, chuckling campaigner Andreu Martínez previously told the Mirror: “The squirt guns are to bother the tourists a bit. Barcelona has been handed to the tourists. This is a fight to give Barcelona back to its residents.”
Meanwhile, a number of Brits have vowed to stay clear of sunny Spain altogether, declaring: “We don’t want to go somewhere we’re not wanted.”
However, as campaigners themselves have asserted, it isn’t the tourists themselves who are the enemy.
READ MORE: Brits avoid Spain after protests and warn ‘we won’t go if we’re not wanted’
As reported by the Metro, one organiser in the Basque city of San Sebastián explained: “People who go on vacation to one place or another are not our enemies…our enemies are those who speculate on housing, who exploit workers and those who are profiting handsomely from the touristification of our cities.”
This is a view shared by many members of the Southern Europe Against Touristification coalition, who say residents are being forced out of their own hometowns thanks to unregulated tourism, which is hurting, not helping, struggling locals.
Campaigners are now piling pressure on local and central governments to adequately regulate the tourism industry, while also calling out housing firms such as Airbnb, which they say are pushing up rents at a time when living costs have already risen substantially.
Zoe Adjey, senior lecturer at the Institute of Tourism and Hospitality at the University of East London, told the publication: “This is very unusual, the tourism and hospitality industry is not the most unified. But it’s good, because as they are saying, the protests have never been about tourists.
“They’re about businesses, and what they are doing with the money they get from tourists. Where is that profit going? It’s clearly not going back into the local areas.”
She continued: “We’ve now got a situation where workers can’t afford to live within any sort of rational distance to their job.”
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