I obviously do not support this application of martial law. I pointed at a mask mandate because it fits your dictatorship vision.

I also didn’t say a thing about kidnapping. Telling people to “get off a plane” without a justification is not kidnapping. If you say “get off this plane, we think it has a bomb on it” things wouldn’t fly any better with people freaking over and having panic attacks. You can do the explaining once people are out of the plane.

So, you can’t accept the idea that in very specific circumstances it can be a good thing for cops to tell you to do something without having to reach for a court order? Like an emergency evacuation order that needs to be secret during that very same hour for whatever good reason or the checkpointing of people in a region where you know that a major prison break just happened?

Not talking about the random pig just thinking “hmm, I’m the boss now” out of nowhere; I’m talking about someone like the head of the police forces giving an order indiscriminately that is limited to a temporal scope.

Even things like “masks are mandatory” can be seen as a “muh freedoms” violation.

If you take things to such extremes, can we have the freedom not to have such freedom? Apparently is what the entire world wants except for a few thousand internet folks

And how come one wanting to have a say on their lives is equated with one wanting to have a say on other people’s deaths?

Tolerance is about letting other people be and giving them rights, not about letting you decide on other people’s being and letting you take their rights.

This is so dead simple existence 101 that one can assume but malice (or an ungodly amount of crayzo ideology) from you.

Hello. I have 4 years of private sector experience. Living with someone else who also does. Both STEM and paid above average for the place we live in (Portugal). Rent is half our bills.

Living alone outside not in a cube and in any place that resembles a city is but impossible. 40 years ago we’d be higher middle class.

And how exactly do you plan to reach this high quality elite content without search engines?

“[search term] reddit” has been a top search since OpenAI decided to open the SEO bot floodgates.

As for the “no system is foolproof”, you’re thinking of implementations, not algorithms. An algorithm can indeed be something-proof. Most “known” algorithms are built on top of very strong mathematical foundations stating what is possible, what is not and what is a maybe.

As for the ads thing, Mozilla is not making a dime off this. It is not monetizable. They’re basically expecting that by giving advertisers a fairly “benign” way to do their shenanigans they will stop doing things the way they currently do (with per-individual tracking).

The absolutists might say that there’s no such thing as benign ads, however truth is that the market forces behind ads are big enough that you’d get website-integrity-bullshit rather ad-free web. Having tracking less ads is better than having a “this website only works in chrome” or “only without extensions” internet.

Is there any other possibility? Maybe. Is is reasonable to think that the moment tracking starts getting blocked em masse, we risk a web-integrity-bullshit +wherever-said-tracking-can-exist-only internet? I think so.

I did not argue they didn’t, I did argue that this was not a mob but a protest.

Did the cops approve the water things? They probably knew, just didn’t pronounce as they probably thought nobody would care much (they’re Spanish cops, not world cops, their cultural bias is what is considered harmful by Spaniards and those don’t see water as a harm).

But if mob-things were to start happening (which could be the case if some tourist just started yelling something like “you should be thankful that I’m spending my money here”) cops would halt that pretty fast. I personally don’t see things escalating in any other way.

1. From a legal standpoint, this was a protest. I can pretty much assure you that the authorities knew that this was going to take place and were close by. Illegal protests get done pretty quickly. Just the fact that they are walking banners in the middle of a road is a clear giveaway.
2. The generality of what you said applies to both mobs and protests. You don’t seem to have a problem with it happening in protests. Don’t people get surrounded by protests? Don’t people in protests carry objects that can be perceived to be guns?

I think it’s fair to say that football hooliganism is not unique to any particular place, and is a specific and unique problem

Yes, over-tourism and hooligans are disjoint problems. But if it is so cheap going to a place that you can just grab your fella drunkards and go you end up mixing them both in…weird ways.

Britain is not that rich anymore (and we aren’t in 2011 anymore), however, during peak crisis (when the IMF rescued Portugal and almost had to do the same with Spain) we couldn’t do much besides accepting anything that was bringing money, no matter how little. For some reason, the brits got used to to go to Algarve as “their” vaction spot, so much that this predates the tourist boom, and at this point in time they just straight up bought everything. You can’t say no when your country is near bankrupt.

The 2008 financial crisis was a major turning point for this massified tourism. The “lazy southern people that don’t want to work” had to accept any money that tourists could bring and accept any consequences. Partly due to this, there’s this culture that tourists are immune to everything. If you think that hooligans are bad in a place with functioning cops, imagine them in a place that, at most, says “please don’t do that” and lets you go, every single time. Even the Germans, which generally are strict rule followers, stop having any regard for simple laws.

That very same “lazy southern people that don’t want to work” stereotype also got many people considering the northern Europeans to be entitled assholes. Not individually. There’s not all that much xenophobia when dealing with individuals 1:1, but when considering them as a group of people, there’s a lot of resentment. Germany, the UK and France being in crisis and facing the same problems we faced is giving some sweet sensation to a lot of people.

There’s also the cultural idea that “when you’re not in your town, you behave”, even internally. People from Oporto have the same prejudice towards Lisbon people. “They come here and act like this is their place, chanting and whatever, twats” goes Portuguese to Portuguese, no need to add foreigners for that attitude to be a thing.

There’s enough context to everything to write quite a few books. Nothing in these interactions are as simple as “people are annoyed at competition in their markets so they’re pointing water guns”.

the local government for approving those businesses to set themselves up on that street

There was the time period I just described where the governments could not have a say towards that + tragedy of commons. Every local government wants to have “the best behaved and richest tourists” so a race to the bottom it goes. Now it is a complete mess to fix the situation, especially since the Portuguese no longer own those places.

As a local government you can’t go against the majority of your people, and the majority of people in Algarve are Brits and French. They own entire regions. Years and years of this environment cause that. Even in the Lisbon region, plenty of tourists buy properties because “wow, such nice weather, everything cheap”, which they end up treating as investment because why wouldn’t them?

There was this particularly damning “golden visa” scheme during the IMF days where you’d get Portuguese citizenship and a myriad of rights if you invested 250k (?) in real estate. A whole lot of people started doing investment tourism due to that and they’re totally capitalizing on that.

The way I see it, there are two major classes of tourist in here. The rich fellas which bought the entire property market, with the richest of them tanking our water supplies with their golf courts and lobbying against any changes. And the bingo-card tourist which sees “50€ on Ryanair, nice! Honey, let’s go to Portugal, it is a place in Spain that has some pubs just like home”. You have a few other classes like the guys that actually enjoy discovering cultures and whatnot, but my personal experience tells me that there aren’t all that many like that even though all of them will say that they’re doing just that.

Now, none of this wall of text pointed at “firing water at people” as a solution; it just pointed a good deal of the context why other solutions are near impossible. However, in a way dissimilar to Portugal, Catalonia actually is a powerhouse. They can actually just limit the amount of people going there and succeed that way. But 1) business travellers are barely distinguishable from tourists 2) Madrid is a pain.

The whole point is that this is a very hard to solve mess. Most people don’t know these details; they merely know that we have a “too many tourists; go away” attitude; they could be halfway decent and just respect it, unless they have some particular interest in the country. There’s a trivial way to distinguish. We actually love to see people trying to speak Portuguese; even if they utterly fail; because this is enough to distinguish them from the 99%. This is how desperate we are for people that actually value anything in Portugal but the pictures and weather.

That can trigger people.

I don’t consider ok to cause real panic to people. I also don’t quite imagine that to be a common thing and I imagine that the crowd to stop if anyone starts looking not ok. That crowd is not trying to harm people at all, they’re trying to get mediatic attention to spread a message that they need to take less tourists. That’s what the first image in the article is saying (in Catalan). It is not saying “no tourists”, it is asking for “reduction of tourism”.

With this said, literally anything can be a trigger. A guy with a megaphone can very well be a trigger.

What if it’s not water?

The other fella I was arguing with said that acid attacks are a common thing in other parts of the world. I had zero clue. I also imagine that it would float this from “totally not a crime, just an annoyance” to “you’re going to be locked behind bars”. That’s what I’d wish if someone did that; it is obviously not ok to give pain and lifelong consequences to someone who’s maybe lacks consideration.

What if someone thinks it’s a real gun (even for a second)?

Have you looked at the pictures in the article? I don’t quite think that people would confuse a crowd with those to be a crowd with guns. Nothing in the context matches out. Not the looks of people. Not the place because Iberia barely has guns.

If they come from a place where everything can be seen as a gun, they can vote for that not to be the case. We don’t need to stack up the considerations to appease literally every possible culture and cultural problem in the world. Zero people who in here are afraid of guns (except for the colonial fighters).

If you’re afraid of clowns, don’t visit the circus.

And if they make an attempt to leave from some risk/fear (real or perceived), they can’t, because they are surrounded.

That would be the case for any other protest. Is independent of the water thing.

Mobs can be scary. They also tend to be very predictable. If your senses tell you that you have been hearing “fuck tourists” for the last 5 minutes and that there’s a huge crowd coming in you direction, well, balance that our with your fear of crowds.

I think common sense would suggest that spraying people with water who are minding their own business

I’m not advocating for that being ok when devoid of context. Just like pointing a megaphone at some institution devoid of context will get you detained (we don’t do “US’s” version of freedom here; a protest that is not properly communication beforehand is forbidden for public security reasons).

If we put up some context to it, we’re talking about targeting a demographic which does plenty of also-not-ok things. Does this mean that blind mobbism is ok? Nope. However, given that there’s zero enforcement on both sides, this mob attitude is in a way to balance things rather-harmlessly in this precarious sittuation.

If laws were to be thoroughly enforced, many tourists would also be in trouble (eg. for loud noise after dark) their prices would be substantially higher (as it is generally believed that there’s plenty of tax evasion and illegal properties in the sector). This means that the gov could definitely be doing things better and enforcing laws better. It is partially our fault because we’re used to live in a lax system (which was mostly ok until this…).

threat of acid attacks

Talking to you was literally the first time I’ve heard of those. For some reason I don’t get, London is unsafe. I hear about knifes and all kinds of shit in there but I don’t see why that’s the case. In the Iberian peninsula it is quite rare for anyone to assault you that way, even in proper robberies.

It’s not relevant to my point, which is that it’s not the fault of someone who goes to another country as a tourist.

As a tourist you are the one doing the decisions. The “let’s pick this 50€ Ryanair over that 300€ whatever to a place that’s not massified” was a decision.

I would equally criticise assaulting end consumers as a form of climate protest. Would you not?

I advocate for lesser evils. In climate matters I think that forcing costumers to pay for externalities would do the trick. Albeit, plenty of people would argue that to be worse than getting sprayed with water. Suddenly that 50€ flight becomes a 2500€ flight and then local tourism becomes much more enticing.

What’s YOUR suggestion?

If you put a flat tax, you harm business.
If you put a quota to it, you’d have the business of pretending that travelers are business people instead of tourists.
If you limit hosting to hotels, you’d get a tremendous market pressure for housing to go down to raise hotels (which is better than “local housing” for tourists as it is more efficient and doesn’t fuck up with neighbors).
If you limit the amount of properties that can do so, you guarantee that no local is ever able to go anywhere else in their own country without a friend lending a sofa.
If you simply spam enough properties such that everyone fits, whenever the economy goes bad (/Covid) the country goes snap bankrupt.

As you can probably imagine, living in a country that suffers from this, I’ve heard plenty of debate. There’s no perfect solution and the solutions that seem to be the closest to good are basically gentrification.

Showing tourists that they’re not welcome is probably one of the actions that causes the lesser amount of harm (both to locals, businesses and tourists) as basically most other measures ensure that the best thing most people would be able to afford would be a few towns away from home.

I assume your personal carbon footprint is 0 in that case.

It is negative. I was living a very modest job and fired myself to voluntarily work for the transportation sector (eg. find ways to make public transit more enticing). The things I started doing were good so I eventually got paid for them. The last time I touched a plane was in 2014, I don’t eat meat and I very rarely buy clothes. For some reason, society has this weird idea that following your conscience means living miserably.

“Oh, but then how will I visit Mars 3 times a year?” You do not. Traveling for leisure is not a god given right. I bet that most people have fairly nice towns not that far from home, and if they do not, why not vote locally to create nice towns locally? Architecture was a concept that was murdered in the 60’s but we can redo things with time.

The farthest I’ve went was literally Barcelona and my vacations start with the question “where can I get to by train in less than a day?”. No government is forcing me not to be an asshole, I can behave without hard rules. This way, If I ever need to go to… say… to Norway, for some researchers conference or whatever, I can take a plane, knowing that it pollutes a lot, yet without an heavy conscience because it is a one off, not the semestral dose of planes and poverty incentives.

And you can say “man, that’s just your opinion”, but the fact was that before massification people saw consideration for others as something important. They had different ideas of what was wrong or right, yet except for the odd asshat, people had the “I’m not going to overfish this lake because other people might also want to fish” attitude. That opinion that “not being considerate is not wrong” is just silly to my ears and is precisely what is fucking up the planet.

I did that because I enjoy Spanish culture

And yet that’s generally not the case. If I had to place a bet, a lot of people that come to Portugal don’t even know that it is not Spain. My parents work in the mail service and you have plenty of mail addressed like “Lisbon, Spain”. They couldn’t give less of a fuck about the place, simply figured that it was cheap and checked travel bingo card on it.

Are there considerate tourists that actually do care for the place and want to be behaved? Plenty. But the ratios are completely fucked. If you talk to people that work in the tourism sector they will point out that they are very VERY tired of dealing with the asses. What’s their percentage? I have zero clue and this is not something measurable, but I personally had plenty of encounters that didn’t quite go the way society should go.

Last year the pope came here and with him a lot of followers. The fuckers had free transportation passes and yet had to break transportation barriers and block off locals because they were all too busy chanting.

That was at the time of my last vacation. I got myself in a train to Spain to miss that and the majority of people I do know did equivalent trips. That’s how saturated the environment is. Every time a big wave comes (pope, sport’s event, Taylor Swift), we simply move away because the city is otherwise going to become unlivable.

Good thing I mentioned Taylor Swift because that’s a prime demo of tourism being an asshole factory. She came here a few months ago. She was mass attended by Americans. People figured tickets in Portugal to be cheaper than wherever they live so they just flew here. Fuck the environment or the Portuguese being able to attend anything where they live without having to pay a 300% premium, right?

That is a xenophobic attack. And you are currently advocating for it.

I advocate for whatever the utilitarian solution is and I do understand the concept of people having feelings when a loved one becomes homeless.

If sending a few hundred tourists to space makes live muuuuch more bearable for millions, then do it.
If having hundreds of locals annoyed makes the lives of millions of tourists great and that leaves the coffers full such that the locals can be compensated, then great.

It doesn’t always need to go against tourists. The problem with tourists is that the current balance is not utilitarian at all. Millions are being left without a country they call home in the name of some other millions being able to prop up their vacation ego. This is a big consequence in exchange for a small reward.

And I’m finding it a bit perplexing that you are simultaneously advocating for that while also talking about making decisions based on conscience.

As I stated, I’m an utilitarian. I advocate for whatever maximizes the global happiness, sustainability et all. Someone getting a miserable life requires a lot of people getting very very happy to balance.

A good part of my interference to “water attacks” is because I don’t see myself getting any more fired up over them than I would over people chanting “go away”. The water part, for me, a someone without any PTSD, it like “ehh, ok”. Might not be for other people, but that was not the way I guessed it. I did not imagine a world with acid attacks nor did imagine getting someone’s ass to my face in public transit to be any less “assault” than being sprayed with droplets of water. I reckon that is is simply my perception.

Random tweet I just came across: https://x.com/Scaife51/status/1811403266531471842?t=4fdIaowFfaHmYv77no51LQ

That’s this place: https://www.reddit.com/r/portugal/comments/1e1c4ky/why_albufeira_is_a_british_colony/

Can you realistically believe that one can live in there without being anti-tourist? That’s NOT a one off. That’s a very common occurrence in the south coast (both Portugal and Spain). It is not a major city or anything like that. Every city down there is currently like that.

I think it is fair to let the local populations set what they consider to be fair or minor. In other comment thread (https://lemmy.world/comment/11138636) I actually bothered looking up the law and, I don’t think that this even considered in criminal law. At least in Portugal there’s no “assault” and the equivalent doesn’t cover this ; Spain is probably the same.

In Japan it is minor to have a station officer force push you into a train. That could be someone’s trigger for past serious trauma.

This is hypothetical, but calling an invasion of personal space and consent a minor annoyance is like saying “oh it’s just a little kiss, come on, give me a kiss”. Sure, a kiss never killed anybody, but we can agree it’s inappropriate to do so without consent right?

One of those is a sexual offense, the other is mostly speech. 5ml of water in the summer heat do not physically affect most people any more than a megaphone would, and this is where law gets muddy. Law doesn’t penalize sound waves (below 120db), farts or whatever things that happen without solid-to-solid contact, but the moment there’s some physical contact, no matter how light, some people in some jurisdictions go crazy.

If I touch you to grab your attention like “hey buddy, you lost this”, I’m technically touching you and that could evoke some weird past trauma, but since the intent is not to cause harm I could never get hooked over that.

I conclude by saying political goals should be completed WITHOUT needing to do that.

Ideally, however neither your thread nor the other thread where I’m talking presented any example on how to solve this without causing bigger troubles. The “people in Barcelona are mean” stereotype is one of the least damaging things they can do to themselves. Quotas & such are terrible for several reasons and ofc that everyone argues that the individual is never responsible for anything they chose to do with their money.

I’m not muttering it. It’s literally assault.

The point I pointed is that the law draws a hard line but reality has no such hard lines. Some ok things fall beyond the line. Some not ok things fall outside. Some common sense helps with that but even that’s cultural.

As for “literally assault”; I can read Spanish but heavy legalese is not something I want to bother with reading. I’m simply assuming that it is not all that different from whatever the law is in here, across the border. You don’t have conventional “assault” in Portuguese law, you have “offenses to the physical integrity”, which can be “simple”, “aggravated” or “by negligence”. The first two assume intent to physically harm; the last one assumed that you had no intent but were terribly negligent and that led to someone being hurt. (Thats Artigo 143.º if you’re into Deepl-checking that)

So, I don’t even think that spraying people in water would constitute “assault”. Maybe “harassment”, you do have that in legalese; however I do believe that harassment needs to be targeted (like to a very finite group of people, not to hundreds of people).

Then you have “disturbances to the public peace”, but if that was to be enforced it would affect tourists waaaay more than protestors. This kind of law is generally not enforced in order to just let the tourists be drunk in the middle of the road however they want without facing consequences over it.

So, to begin with, I don’t think that anyone here is committing a crime. Your notion of what is a crime is totally up to your society; my society can have a totally different notion.

As a “fun fact”, we recently got pseudo-nazis doing public speeches over “claiming back Portugal” and telling everyone that looked tourist to fuck off. That was not only legal but protected and anyone that attempted to mess with these events would be the one committing a crime.

None of those consequences you listed are any individual tourist’s fault.

That kind of logic implies that nobody is responsible for pollution or lack of recycling but governments. You are obviously responsible for your actions. There might be some government shaping them but ideally your conscience would suffice.

For some things you need help from some entity because it is just too hard (like not rewarding companies that put lead in food; silly example but you get it) but simple things like “save water”, “recycle”, “be nice to whoever is nice to you”, “let people exit transit before you go in” are pretty much left for consciousness.

You can decide your next vacation location based on consciousness or you can do so based on ego. “Oh man, Barcelona is cheap and looks sexy in my travel curriculum” is a condemnable attitude.

If the government has failed to regulate these things that’s on them.

Like I already asked you plenty of times; how do you regulate that without plenty of side effects?
Travel tax? You’d be harming businesses as well.

Forbid local housing from being used? Already a limitation in place; but too late; not the licenses have already been issued. (PS: These are the license counts for inner Lisbon (emerald is regular housing used for tourists and blue is proper tourism estate): https://poligrafo.sapo.pt/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/4bcf1c68-a837-45ed-9f83-15c4ed12e549.png)

Have some mandatory prioritization of locals over foreigners? That would be xenophobic.

Dress it up however you want, you are advocating for indiscriminate xenophobic assault and harassment.

I’ve lived in both Portugal and Barcelona (for one month but it was a thing), in both cases before the tourism boom. The people in both places were everything but xenophobic; they both used to be very welcoming. The thing is not xenophobia as the attitude would be the exact same if the problem was to arise from the same country (if the numbers were enough).

You can’t simply become homeless and jobless while staying welcoming; esp when, not all but plenty of, tourists treat us as inferior. They consider us to have less rights than they do because “they paid”. That’s a real rhetoric you get to experience.

Have these two recent reddit posts (deepl them) as a first hand experience that’s not even trying to be xenophobic but cannot not be: Guy from Azores: https://www.reddit.com/r/portugal/comments/1dy6t3f/odeio_turistas/

Foreigner that was shocked at the fact that we look like a British colony: https://www.reddit.com/r/portugal/comments/1e1c4ky/why_albufeira_is_a_british_colony/

Roadblocking is not entrapping or touching (even with a toy)

Yes, they are not. One of them leads to annoyances, the other leads to people losing their jobs or missing their connections. Everything is a matter of cost-benefit. If a major annoyance once might do country-wide changes, then that’s maybe worth doing.

I would, at best, classify this as a minor annoyance. I understand this to be a largely cultural thing. I personally don’t care much if people interact with me that way. I wouldn’t even call it a rare thing; it happens a lot outside of protests.

that of surrounding/hounding/bothering individuals, as this can intimidate them

That’s… the entire point? Those fellas want to create this idea that tourists are not welcome without actually harming them. That’s precisely the goal. If that’s the idea you got out of this then the protest just worked.

and disrespect their consent/bodily autonomy

Ehhh, big meh. There are waaaaay worse experiences in that regard in a “tourist’s life”. For example you have this “mandatory tourist thing” to do in Lisbon which is to ride the tram 28. You can hardly find an online picture of what it actually looks but it basically is equivalent to putting 15 clowns in a mini. The kind of crammed where people get troubles breathing. Barcelona has their equivalents as well.

Tourists aren’t supposed to feel their bodily autonomy harmed from this; they are supposed to feel that they’re not welcome.

normalizing this stuff makes it easier for more hatful people to get away with it in the future

Of course that hate-twats will try to capitalize on every opportunity to erode freedoms, however, in my opinion, there are quuuuuuuuuuuuite a few steps between this particular event and that scenario.

Quite some southern cities even have this without the protests. It is very common for people to attach water misters to buildings. Those spray people passing them without asking for any consent. Just so happens that they feel great during the hot days.

Barcelona DOES have a unique reputation for these anti-tourist groups.

The literal exact same thing happens in every other alike place. We have the same in Lisbon.

The pieces of information foreigners get do not necessarily match the local truths.

As an example: I do volunteering at a kind-of-food-bank. It is obviously free to do. However, if you try to look that up in the internet, every single result will lead you to the idea that you need to have a guide or whatever reason to pay in order to do volunteering in here. The English information is HIGHLY distorted to hit foreigners. It is 100% unreliable. Do not attempt to look up for things about southern European countries in English. Most things that can somehow be capitalized on are lies or deceptive.

assaulting

Keep muttering that word. Whatever.
Their Rickshaws and boats are fucking the air as well. Can I also say I’m being assaulted? I’m objectively being harmed.

Plenty of people over here are considering way less nice things that spraying water. You have some actual assault going on in places (as in, punching tourists in the face) and vandalism to drive them off, but yeah, let’s pretend that the 5ml of water are the real harm.

strangers who have done nothing

Knowingly going to a country suffering from overtourism? Going for AirBnbs instead of hotels? Blocking locals from being able to go to work because whatever route they pick looks scenic? Not bothering to learn like three words or whatever to be able to say hello or goodbye?

That’s a “I’m going to throw 500kg of glass in the general bin” kind of done nothing. They know they’re being asses to the locals. Is it legal? Yes. It is also legal not to recycle.

They’re dehumanizing us because “they paid” but 30 seconds of slight moisture is the real crime.

The 200€ of flights (which has plenty of negative externalities), 100€ for the AirBnb (which not only was someone’s eviction but also likely dodged taxes), 100€ for random food (which likely dodged taxes) and 100€ in some random tourist trap (which many times dodge taxes). Those crimes do not count because they were intermediated by someone else? The thousands who get trespassing tourists? The littered nature? No, those do not count; what really counts is the bloody water.

The bulk of the tourism money doesn’t come from the 90% of clueless asses filling the streets. Comes from the rich ones. But if the law was such that it only allowed the rich to come it would also be bad. So, like I asked you before, what’s the actual solution? Just pretending that nothing is happening?

And FYI, every single one of these countries has not-that-far-places that are more than pleased to see tourist activity. You have like ecovillages & such where you get to participate, appreciate nature and do rural tourism, all while enjoying the Mediterranean weather they came for. But no, people really must take the 1000000000th picture of the Sagrada Familia so that their travel-ego fills up. And yet you think that we should have empathy over that? Housing and jobs disappearing because random twats want to take pictures. Oh noes, the moisture. Right…

And what I asked you was what they should do instead given that Catalonia will always be a minority.

The last minority in Spain that was veeeeery unhappy started a diplomat space program. Is that the way?

I also pointed out that this pacific-ish way of manifestation (cmon, this is not hard assaulting; more like attention grabbing) has done wonders for some movements in the past. Modern Netherlands were reborn out of people roadblocking “innocent people trying to go to work or trying to enjoy their off days” with bicycle protests.

I propose turning that group back from a mob, into a protest, and getting in the government’s face.

Has happened, hundreds of times. Zero effect. Governments couldn’t love anything more but free money that comes independently of the well being of their citizens. Dutch disease 2.0. Plus, the Madrid government isn’t exactly known for attending Catalonia’s needs. For some reason they tried to declare independence 9999 times in these last decades.

The folks inside should instead take the issue up with whoever put the sign on the door, and work to take that down.

Well, having a reputation for being annoying towards tourists is a sign by itself. And put yourself in the shoes of those fellas. What can they realistically do if the democratic process doesn’t cut? Should they just abandon their land?

Downplay it all you want but it’s still assault

Words aren’t black and white things. The cashier not issuing a receipt is financial fraud but we’re talking about gum; they dodged 5 cents in taxes.

Especially when acid attacks are not unheard of

I personally haven’t heard of those one single time, but even if they were a thing every now and then, are we going to assume that anyone spraying a few ml of water might be throwing acid just bcuz? The point of these protests is to raise attention to the problem, not to harm tourists. If someone goes that “extra mile”, throw them behind bars, this instead of assuming that the thousand others might be trying to seriously injuring someone when they’re, very likely, doing something that goes away after 2 minutes in the local weather.

It is not a secret that a few cities across southern Europe very pissy about the treatment they’re getting. I’m not into victim blaming, but it is strange to think of these tourists as surprised when they got confronted with some sort of protests or message of disdain. In Portugal those are all over the place. From graffiti to protests. And sure, most of those do not involve any sort of physical touch with the tourists, however, if I was a tourist I’d be way madder at some of the protests I see over here than over taking a minuscule spray of water and those you wouldn’t qualify as “assault” only as “speech”.