It’s not just a Spanish problem. Cities across the world are struggling with how to cope with overtourism and a boom in short-term rental platforms, like Airbnb, but perhaps nowhere has surging discontent been so evident as in Barcelona, where protesters plan to take to the streets on Sunday.
Similar demonstrations are slated in several other Spanish cities, including on the Balearic islands of Mallorca and Ibiza, as well as in the Italian postcard city of Venice, Portugal’s capital Lisbon and other cities across southern Europe — marking the first time a protest against tourism has been coordinated across the region.
Spaniards have staged several large protests in Barcelona, Madrid and other cities in recent years to demand lower rents. When thousands marched through the streets of Spain’s capital in April, some held homemade signs saying “Get Airbnb out of our neighborhoods.”
They could but tourism is over 10% of Spain’s GDP so with the world economy on the verge of recession all the time they don’t want to risk it. On top of that there are limits as to what taxes the central government can impose on autonomic regions and many of them don’t want any additional taxes and fight every decision like that in courts. Not to mention that there are many places kept alive only by the short term rentals. You have half abandoned villages where there’s simply no work around. If you kick out tourists from there those places will case to exists. Your solution doesn’t distinguish between places like that and the mass tourism destination people are actually protesting against.