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Protesters in Barcelona have sprayed visitors with water as part of a demonstration against mass tourism.
Demonstrators marching through areas popular with tourists on Saturday chanted “tourists go home” and squirted them with water pistols, while others carried signs with slogans including “Barcelona is not for sale.”
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the city in the latest demonstration against mass tourism in Spain, which has seen similar actions in the Canary Islands and Mallorca recently, decrying the impact on living costs and quality of life for local people.
The demonstration was organised by a group of more than 100 local organizations, led by the Assemblea de Barris pel Decreixement Turístic (Neighborhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth).
They do campaign against their governments. They’ve now gotten international news coverage for confronting tourists, an action that could cause many to pause when considering visiting the city. The people who run the city will notice that and so will potential future tourists.
Sounds like it could be potentially impactful to me.
They already had loads of international news coverage for the airbnb ban, and I guarantee they would have gotten significantly more had they, again, simply targeted the people responsible, rather than those who have zero power to do anything abut it (because again - they aren’t even just random locals, they are people who having already paid for their time there and contributed to the problem, and who are unlikely to return, not regularly anyway, and have zero impact on local politics).
Getting you to notice isn’t impact, you are irrelevant to the people who have the power over their situation.
The people who have power will care if tourism dropped because tourists are made literally uncomfortable by local protests and that becomes known to potential travelers