“It stinks of tourists”: what is this sticker of the Spanish being fed up ?

© Johan Mouchet – Unsplash

Dani Romero is from Malaga in Andalusia, a few kilometers from Marbella. It was he who was at the origin of a movement denouncing the surge in real estate prices exacerbated by tourist rentals, which was taken up by our colleagues from Le Figaro .

He decided to step up to the plate when the apartment he had been renting for 10 years was finally going to be transformed into tourist accommodation. He thus began to create stickers with virulent slogans against tourists such as 'It' was my house, 'A family lived here' ;, “Go home” and “It stinks of tourists”. The trend quickly spread to other cities like Madrid or Barcelona where real estate pressure is strong due to seasonal rentals.

The rents are very (too ?) expensive

Dani Romero's movement grew and many residents joined the protest against overtourism and its consequences on the real estate market. A recent survey in Malaga also revealed that 60% of residents considered their rents to be 'very expensive', although 80% recognized the positive impact of tourism on their income.

Romero owns a bar benefiting from tourist customers and insists on the need to regulate the sector. “I have nothing against tourism, but we need to regulate it – me and half the city can't continue like this”, a- he told The Guardian. He also specifies: “there is no organization or political party behind this. It's the residents who are fed up because it’s a subject that concerns absolutely all of us”.

200 euros to visit an apartment

Romero also shared anecdotes about the exorbitant demands of owners, mentioning for example deposits of 40,000 euros and checks for 200 euros simply for … visit apartments. Despite these concerns, the city of Malaga recently rejected legislation that would have introduced rent caps by classifying the rental market as 'under pressure'.

This problem – find the right balance between the economic benefits of tourism and the protection of the rights of local inhabitants – is one of the great challenges of recent decades in Spain. After a strong period of coastal construction in the 1990s and 2000s, the bursting of the real estate bubble in 2008 plunged the country into a serious banking and financial crisis which followed it for almost 10 years . Today, the country seems to have turned the page with a real estate market that continues to soar.

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