The rise of anti-tourist sentiment in Spain…

Last weekend tens of thousands of Mallorcan residents thronged the streets of the island’s capital, Palma de Mallorca to protest at the unsustainable level of tourism on the island under the slogan ‘Mallorca al limite’ (Majorca at the limit) :

The protest turned violent when the Spanish National Police baton charged parts of the crowd and fired rubber bullets:

The Policía Nacional have claimed that the violence occurred only after some of the protestors had attacked tourists stating:

some protesters “had assaulted tourists and a kiosk owner, and were throwing stones, sticks and bottles at our officers

The protestors were protesting against the number of tourists on the island driving up the cost of living and property prices for locals and about concerns of the environmental impact of mass tourism impact in the area.

Tourism is of course an enormously important economic asset for Spain which accounts for roughly 12–13% of Spain’s GDP and employs millions of people and is one of the central economic staples alongside agriculture and manufacturing. In 2025 Spain welcomed some 94 million tourists, against a domestic population of around 50 million. This is projected to rise to 100 million by the end of 2026. For a country still feeling the legacy of a severe financial crisis in the first decade of the twenty first century and with still a reasonably high level of public debt and youth unemployment, this volume of visitor spending is difficult to overestimate, it funds jobs, infrastructure, and regional development.

However, the very source that generates this funding has also generated an increasingly more vocal source of social strain which has bred a backlash in the ‘anti-overtourism’ movement. This movement says that it is not anti tourism but rather concerned about the negative impact of excessive tourism on housing, local life, and the environment, specifically, that short-term rental platforms like Airbnb have inflated rents making it difficult for locals to find affordable housing, while cities such as Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, and Donostia, (San Sebastian) experience heavy year-round crowding, alongside pollution, waste, and strain on water resources in the Canary and Balearic Islands, plus a broader fear of cultural erosion as towns and neighbourhoods become tourist-only zones.

(The last point being particularly relevant to the southern and western coasts where enormous property speculation and development has established large areas populated by part time residents and retirees where English and German are at least as widely spoken as Spanish)

These grievances have resulted in repeated, large-scale demonstrations such as was seen at the weekend with Some of the protests have going beyond marches and signage, demonstrators in Barcelona and Mallorca have sprayed tourists and hotel workers with water guns and stuck stickers reading “Tourist Go Home” on hotel and hostel doors, dramatising the frustration that has been building for years and, as was alleged at the weekend, tourists attacked.

Another perception is that the Spanish government is attempting to transform the economy away from its agrarian and manufacturing bases to an overwhelming service economy.

So, what’s to be done when an unstoppable force meets an immoveable object?

The protestors want local authorities to legislate more proactively for sustainable tourism through measures like short-term rental caps, tourist taxes, and limits on cruise arrivals etc and therein lies the paradox, the very successful model of Spanish tourism, built on, large volume based on relative affordability, is the very thing that now threatens the quality of life in the very places that tourists come to see, forcing policymakers to balance an industry the economy depends on against residents who increasingly feel gentrified out of their own cities, towns and villages.