The first time I visited Europe was the summer before my eighth grade year. It was the furthest I had traveled from home as well as my first time on an airplane. That trip changed everything. I felt the world open up to me, and I saw places that had only been available to me in the pages of history books and on the screen. I had foods that expanded my mind and taste buds and experienced art and architecture that was otherworldly. I fell fast and hard, and nearly three decades later my love affair with Europe has continued.
Over the years, I have made more than half a dozen trips back, most of them solo. While Europe has much to offer with its cultural diversity and easy accessibility, what really kept me returning were the connections I made with the locals during my travels.
But my last trip to the continent in October felt different. The hospitableness that I had felt in the past was replaced by frustration and a very real sense of not being wanted. “If you love Venice, then do not go there,” a woman from the floating city told me when I shared my affection for her hometown over a drink in Porto, Portugal.
While I was not altogether surprised by the sentiment given Venice’s crumbling infrastructure and struggles to manage a large number of visitors, it struck me given Europeans cultural emphasis on exploration and because the woman was a tourist herself in a city grappling with its own popularity. I wondered aloud how she reconciled her desire for travel while actively discouraging others from it, but it was a question I was never able to get an answer to.
The resentment and anger towards visitors spilled into the streets of some of Europe's most popular destinations over the summer, which is historically a busy time for travel to the region. For months there had been media reports about the protests and aggression towards tourists. But I had hoped that by October the crowds would have subsided and the anger by locals dissipated. When I arrived in Madrid, it became clear that was not the case.
While signs of anti-tourism were visible in many places, it was most acute in Barcelona and Madrid. This is in no doubt because Spain has experienced a surge in visitors with more than 73.9 million international travellers flocking to the country during the first nine months of the year, which is a nearly 11 percent increase for the same period last year. At its current rate of growth, Spain is expected to surpass France as the most visited country in the European Union by 2040.
Tourism is big business for the country and contributes 13 percent to its GDP. In just the first nine months of 2024, international tourists pumped more than 99 billion euros into the Spanish economy, up almost 17 percent year-over-year. This stands in stark contrast to its economy only a handful of years ago. Spain entered the pandemic in a weakened financial state with an unemployment rate of 14 percent, and COVID had been the death blow that plunged the country into a recession that it had not experienced in 80 years.
Despite tourism's hand in the nation’s recovery, locals remain disillusioned with the number of visitors. While the issue is multifaceted, one of the key reasons is the availability of affordable housing. As tourism has boomed so has short-term rentals, which negatively impacted the housing supply and drove up prices. This summer, Barcelona announced its plans to ban all short-term rentals by 2029. Last month, Madrid rolled out a plan to outlaw short-term rentals in the historic centre to maintain the residential nature of the area. Many other cities in the country are following suit with their own regulations.
Then there is also the sense by many locals that the culture is shifting underneath them. A tour guide and native Catalan in Barcelona shared that most people understand the importance of tourism but described a recent situation where she visited a store and the employee did not know the native language and could only speak English. “My mother does not speak English, so what would she have done in that situation,” she said.
Living in San Francisco for the past 17 years, I have had a front row seat to the affordable housing crisis and a culture clash driven by the explosion of tech employees who have migrated to the area. It is a tricky business to manage a city’s growth and preserve the financial accessibility of it for the majority all while maintaining the DNA of what made the place unique to begin with.
It is easy for me to empathize with the plight of Spaniards, but what I struggle with is the way they have gone about it. In my time traveling through Madrid and Barcelona, I found it hostile at times like when I was yelled at and singled out at a high-end cocktail bar and told to wait outside while everyone else waiting in line with me was allowed in or when I was accosted by a tenant outside my Airbnb on the way to the gym. Other times it was less dramatic, but I was often ignored or passed over even when I had been patiently waiting in line for service.
I think there is danger in the otherism that seems pervasive in their debate. A fault in humans is that we often perceive the unfamiliar as a threat. But I do not believe that fear and anger is how we get to sustainable solutions where locals and tourists can peacefully coexist.
It is hard to recommend people visit a place where you are not wanted. I will not proclaim it is the will of the majority, but I had enough negative interactions to know it isn’t the minority. I ended my time in Spain prematurely and traveled on to Italy where there were some signs of the movement, but I found it much more open to tourists.
In the end, it was not the Spanish dream I had hoped for. But I still hope to return one day when the country has reached some equilibrium
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