“Don’t come,” is the message.
In the summer of 2023, protesters of tourism growth in Spain took on a new tactic—targeting visitors directly to express their discontent. In July, 2024, thousands of residents of Barcelona took to the streets, dousing patrons suspected to be tourists in front of restaurants and hotels in the popular Barceloneta neighborhood.
More than 90 million foreign visitors arrived in Spain in 2024, making it the world’s second-most visited country, behind France. Tourism officials predict that the number of international visitors will continue to boom in the coming years. Tourism sector growth has boosted Spain’s economy, but it has also brought with it housing inflation. Once a bargain for home-buying, Spain’s average home price has increased 44% in the last decade, significantly outpacing average salary growth in the country.
Hundreds of thousands marched in over 40 cities across Spain protesting high housing costs—driven in many cities by housing units either being sold to foreigners as vacation homes, or converted by Spanish or foreign investors into vacation rentals for inbound visitors. Protestors demanded action by the government to curtail tourism’s upward pressure on housing costs and impacts on local quality of life.
It’s estimated that nearly 150,000 protestors marched in Madrid, the country’s capital. The Bank of Spain estimates the country has a shortfall of some 500,000 housing units, but is only adding inventory at the rate of 120,000 units per year. Many popular tourist areas, like Barcelona, Málaga, Madrid, the Balearic Islands, and the Canary Islands are facing even more dire housing shortages.
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Many of the protest signs directly called out property speculators purchasing homes in areas popular with tourists. In Majorca, demonstrators directly appealed to would-be visitors to the island. “Don’t come,” was the message.
Last spring, tourism protestors on the island of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, protested new hotel projects. There too, residents were frustrated that new construction focused on housing visitors at a time when many island residents working in tourism or other industries were forced to sleep in their cars or in caves because the influx of tourists had made local housing unaffordable.
This March, anti-tourism activists vandalized rental cars on Tenerife. On the island, rental cars are easily recognizable because their owners often put stickers on the back of the cars identifying which agency they were rented from. The activists smashed windows, then shared videos of the damage online with anti-tourism messaging.
Spanish cities have taken action to keep housing meant for local residents from being snapped up, but it doesn’t appear to have alleviated the problem. Barcelona announced it would ban vacation rentals by 2028, and hasn’t licensed any new ones since 2014. At the national level, the Spanish government has proposed a 100% tax on second homes bought in the country by non-E.U. residents. Foreign buyers—including E.U. residents who are not Spanish nationals—accounted for 15% of home sales in the country.
The city of Málaga has already cancelled plans to build an additional 1,300 units of tourist housing in the city, and is currently considering whether to completely ban foreigners from purchasing property in the city at all. The municipal council has also retained a consultant to help them identify existing vacation rentals operating without a license so they can work to close them and return the housing inventory to the local market.
In Spain, local municipalities carry strong authority to determine the method and to whom property can be sold, and Spanish law separates the ownership of land and the ownership of a structure on the same land into two different legal situations, which gives municipalities more options to regulate and restrict both land sales and land development by existing owners.
Local government officials estimate that some 350,000 non-Spaniards reside in and around the city, and that 70% of new inbound residents are coming from outside the country.
