The funny thing is that they don’t want to grasp that people can’t live in the majority of Barcelona and surrounding cities and towns LITERALLY.
In the really touristy parts of Barcelona (half the city) there is no housing market because there are no homes in the market because everything is fucking Airbnb. If you don’t live in Barcelona, but you live in the surrounding areas the little housing options there are inaccessible if you are a resident because it can cost over 300k-400k in places like Hospitalet del Llobregat (5-6 years ago the majority of housing in the city was 200k or less unless you went to specific parts with luxury flats).
People can’t live in Barcelona because there are no grocery shops or essential shops to have a normal life. When I was young and up to my teenage years (I’m only 25 btw) Barcelona was known by the small multi-generational business and artisans. If you needed something you went to X store that was in X place, and you knew it was good because your grandma used to go there when she was young (the thing being food, clothes, furniture, anything you could imagine). Nowadays all these small business have disappeared (I know some of them are barely surviving but when I talk to them all of them are saying that they don’t know how much longer they can stay) and in their place a bunch of souvenir shops that sell sevillanas (from Andalusia), tango (from Argentina), mariachi hats (from Mexico) and Son Goku T-shirts have opened thus making that the few people who lived there unable to subside (you need food and this type of things).
Starting in May and up till October you can barely go to the city centre and surrounding areas (where all the official buildings are, the majority of offices, etc) because of the tourists. They are literally EVERYWHERE. You can’t catch the metro because it is full of tourists, you can’t catch the bus because it’s full of tourists, you need to add 10-15min (or more) to your commute because tourists will be in the streets and are going to block the fucking way and won’t let you walk.
Tourists are simply rude and uncivil. You can’t grasp how rude they are. I haven’t been treated worse than how tourists treated me. They pee on the streets in the middle of the day, they drink and vomit everywhere they are, they go nude in the street even by schools playgrounds, they do drugs, they are in the way. ALWAYS. They have 0 spacial awareness or something because they will stop in the middle of a busy street and cars will try to go around them. You will lose your train because a tourist was in the tall and didn’t let you walk by or let you help them. You will be late to work/school because tourists will stop in the middle of the street and didn’t let you pass (and if you dare to tell them something or even worse, touch them, be ready for an altercation). Be ready to be treated like garbage, be ready to be treated as if you are barely human, be ready for tourist trashing your shop/restaurant/place because “españa.sangria.fiesta” and because they are too lazy to parent they children. Be ready to have the laws of your city changed because tourists can’t act in public and now hotels don’t have balconies, windows don’t open or there are no pools. If they are renting a flat (Airbnb type of thing) be ready for constant fights, police calls, not being able to sleep, garbage “falling from the sky” (the tourists flat)…
What some people don’t seem to grasp is that the tourist issue is not a new thing, maybe the tourists are finding out NOW because for them we were like the monkey exhibit at the zoo but in 2015, Barcelona mayor was elected because her opposition to what the tourism have done to the city. People have been done with tourists destroying the city for so long that 10 years ago it was what made political parties win elections. Maybe those tourists should reflect in the way the act or how they treat someone else’s home instead of crying because people are fed up with them.
notmuchfordancing