Exclusive: YouGov polling across Europe suggests most countries are sympathetic to protests against overtourism
A third of people in Spain say their local area now has too many international visitors, according to a continent-wide survey that has found most people across Europe are sympathetic to protests against overtourism and back steps to combat it.
The YouGov survey comes after a summer of demonstrations and urgent warnings against the impact of mass tourism from Santorini to the Canary Islands, and measures aimed at reducing it announced from the Cinque Terre to Amsterdam.
The polling in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK found Spain was the country that felt most strongly about the phenomenon, with 32% of respondents saying there were now too many foreign travellers in their area.
Tourists are not culture. They’re a zombie plague.
I promise you, if you move there, learn Spanish and start working for a local company, you’ll learn that people there are extremely welcoming to foreigners.
But if all you want is an Instagram shot in the same spot as the other 16 million people who visited just this year a city of 1.6m, and an “authentic” paella (you won’t get an authentic one, trust me, but you’ll be told it is and you’ll keep bragging about it to your colleagues once you return from your vacay, even though the thing you tried tastes nothing like what a paella should taste, digression end), then you bring a negative cultural value. You’re an annoyance, and a one that’s not worth whatever financial benefit it brings.
One could also argue that most of your financial contribution goes to making hotels and landlords richer, and nobody really needs that.
So, I’m with people of Barcelona who paint “fuck you tourists” on their walls.