Thousands took part in the latest slow-walk through Malaga town centre, holding banners that read ‘We feel strangers in our own city’ and ‘Tourism forces us out’
More than 15,000 protestors have taken to the streets of Malaga in the latest anti-mass-tourism demo in Spain.
Marchers held up banners that read: ‘We feel strangers in our own city’ and ‘Malaga is for the people of Malaga, tourism forces us out.’ Some of the banners, in many cases pieces of cardboard the protestors had scrawled messages in felt-tip pen on, said: ‘One more tourist is one less local resident’ and others: ‘Padlocks out of our neighbourhoods’ in reference to the coded key holders outside tourist apartment blocks.
The demo was organised by the Malaga Tenants Union, with the backing of nearly 50 organisations including Greenpeace and Oxfam, under the slogan: “Malaga para vivir, no para sobrevivir’ which in English translates roughly as ‘Malaga to live in, not survive in.’
A right-wing group tried to hijack the protest soon after it started yesterday in central city square Plaza de la Merced by chorusing ‘Council housing for nationals’ but were met with calls of ‘Fascists out of our neighbourhoods’ and ended up disbanding.
The slow walk through Malaga town centre, which finished in emblematic Constitution Square, ended with the reading of a manifesto where protest organisers said: “We’re not going to allow ourselves to be expelled from our own city. We’re staying put.
“We’re not going to allow Malaga to become a theme park emptied of local residents. We’re not going to allow shops to be replaced by franchises, pavements with terraces and rents with eviction letters.”
Santiago Perez, 67, who attended the march, told local press: “I’m not against tourism but I want it to be regulated so we have quality tourism and not the drunken type of tourism the holiday rentals attract.”
Earlier this year stickers were plastered over the front of tourist apartment blocks in Malaga with messages in Spanish saying: “F##k off from here” and “Stinking of Tourists.” Others that appeared, alluding to the same problems expressed by residents in places like Tenerife about the lack of affordable accommodation caused by mass tourism, say: “This used to be my house” and ‘A family used to live here’.
A Malaga bar owner who was recently told he had to leave the home he has lived in for the past 10 years so it could be used by tourists staying on short-term lets, was linked at the time to the campaign. He had organised a social media initiative proposing customers come up with alternatives revolving around the AT signs on the front of holiday apartment blocks, short for Apartamento Turistico in Spanish, in a play on words game.
They came up with imaginative proposals which included ‘A Tu Puta casa’ and ApesTando a Turista – English for ‘F##k off home’ and ‘Stinking of Tourist.’ The bar owner, known as Dani Drunko, went on to admit things had got a “bit out of hand.”
A second anti-mass tourism protest is due to go ahead in the Majorcan capital Palma on July 21.
Organisers claimed the last one there on April 25, where some holidaymakers were booed and insulted as they ate their evening meals along the demo route, was attended by 25,000 people although government officials put the figure at around 10,000.
Smaller protests have taken place in Ibiza and Menorca.
In the Canary Islands in April, an estimated 130,000 people across the Atlantic archipelago took to the streets with placards and banners to protest at the effect mass tourism was having there.
