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Video | Tourists, Go Home! Thousands March Against Tourism in Barcelona

  • July 6, 2024
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Thousands of people demonstrated in Barcelona For restrictions on demand for mass tourismwhich makes housing more expensive in this city, which is one of the main tourist destinations

Video | Tourists, Go Home! Thousands March Against Tourism in Barcelona

Thousands of people demonstrated in Barcelona For restrictions on demand for mass tourismwhich makes housing more expensive in this city, which is one of the main tourist destinations in Spain, as well as others in Europe and America. suffers from the problem of renting out apartments during vacations.

According to the City Guard and local police, about 2,800 people took part in the march to say that overcrowding is negatively affecting the city’s residents. raise housing prices and cause displacement from their neighborhoods.

More than 140 organizations in the city, including neighborhood associations, environmentalists, housing movements and labor unions, organized a march demanding a change in the direction of the city’s tourism model, which has already 1.6 million inhabitants, and last year it received about 12 million tourists. According to the city council.

“Tourist, go home”

Under the slogan “Enough!” Let’s limit tourism. The demonstration was led by a banner that read “Reduce tourism now,” while participants carried others such as “Tourist, go home” and “Neighbors under threat of extinction.”

The associations’ conveners denounced in a manifesto that the model based on mass tourism “creates economic dependence on a highly unstable industry.”

They also said that “even forced regulation of seasonal rentals or the disappearance of tourist rentals would not, by themselves, change the dynamics” of the housing market.

There are no more tourist houses in Barcelona

Barcelona Mayor Jaume Colboni has announced that from November 2028 there will be no tourist apartments in the city, of which there are an estimated 10,000, although there are fears that there will be many more illegal apartments. This is in line with other cities such as Paris, London and New York, which have taken measures to restrict this type of accommodation.

“It is necessary to truly stop and reverse the process of touristization: to put an end once and for all to the intervention of the tourism sector in public policy, as well as to the coexistence or interested cooperation of the administration,” the manifesto says.

Tourism is damaging the environment

Beyond the housing problem, organisers warned that the tourism-based production model was also damaging the environment, causing more pollution and worsening the climate emergency.

Faced with this situation, they demanded a “tourism reduction plan” that would reduce the economic weight of this activity in the city, accompanied by further diversification of the economy. (EFE)

Source: Aristegui Noticias

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