Menys Turisme, Més Vida (Less Tourism, More Life) has called for a meeting on 15 February at a school in Mallorca, where campaigners will discuss tactics and train in workshops
A Spanish group campaigning against overtourism has urged its members to “reorganize” and “strengthen” their efforts to tackle the negative impact of the tourism industry on local residents.
Menys Turisme, Més Vida (Less Tourism, More Life) has called for a meeting on 15 February at a school in Mallorca, where training sessions and workshops will be held in preparation for the upcoming tourist season.
The campaign group announced it would “intensify” its actions after Spanish authorities unveiled a billion-euro investment in the tourism sector. They also oppose the continued growth of luxury tourism and real estate speculation in the country, and the worsening housing crisis.
“Together, trained, organized, we will have the strength to stand up and defeat this criminal system,” the group posted on X.
This group was behind a major anti-tourism protest in Palma de Mallorca last summer, which saw streets filled with demonstrators protesting against soaring housing costs linked to the island’s tourism boom. Approximately 10,000 protesters took part on 21 July, with people marching holding models of planes, cruise ships, and posters that read “no to mass tourism” and “stop private jets.”
During the July march, protestors displayed angry banners, making it very clear that they were not happy with the number of holidaymakers – including Brits – who pour into Majorca each year.
They carried hundreds of placards and banners, telling tourists to go home and that they were not welcome on the island. At the time Government officials warned the campaigners to watch their behaviour so that repeats of scenes in the country’s capital, Barcelona, when tourists were sprayed with water from toy guns, would not be seen in Majorca.
Now, the group has criticized the Balearic authorities, accusing them of prioritizing tourism investment over infrastructure projects that would benefit permanent residents. “While the Balearic Government exceeds the billionaire investments of 1.12bn euros to defend tourist interests, the public infrastructure, healthcare, the territory… is on the verge of collapse,” the group said in a translated statement on social media.
Last month, Balearic Islands President Marga Prohens announced that 1.12bn euros would be spent on making tourism more sustainable and modern in the Balearics, according to Majorca Daily Bulletin.
“While the tourist lobby continues to get rich and prices skyrocket, wages are stagnant and the living conditions of the working class continue to become more precarious,” the group continued. The extraordinary measures of the state are nothing more than anaesthetics to not solve the problem.“And the sustainability pact is nothing more than a strategy that only wastes time,” the statement online continued.
The group has emphasized that profits for tourism companies are growing at twice the rate of workers’ wages.
There is a burgeoning movement pushing back against the anti-tourist protesters. Last summer a group of residents, mainly from Palma itself, tried to turn the tables on the protestors by showing they are in support of tourists. Pro-tourism supporters sabotaged anti-tourism campaigners’ banners by slapping them with their own stickers, saying that holidaymakers were welcome in Majorca and the other Balearic islands of Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera.
