Protests in Spain, Mexico target travelers as overtourism anger grows

Nan Palmero was at a rehearsal dinner in Mexico Metropolis’s stylish Roma Norte neighborhood, forward of a marriage of two American buddies, when he heard a “rumbling” outdoors.

From the restaurant’s second story, Palmero described seeing a big group of individuals shifting by way of the streets, some holding placards, shouting “Gringos go away.”

He later discovered that demonstrators smashed restaurant home windows and broken automobiles, together with the brand new automobile of his buddies’ marriage ceremony planner — a neighborhood resident — he stated.

 “They wrecked her automobile, they smashed a window, they ripped off a mirror, they spray-painted the aspect of it. It was actually fairly nasty,” he stated.

Palmero, an avid traveler from San Antonio, Texas, stated he had heard that an inflow of digital nomads and overseas vacationers had pushed up costs in a number of the metropolis’s hottest neighborhoods.

However he was not conscious that residents have been organizing demonstrations, like people who he had examine in Barcelona and different components of Europe, he stated.

“Individuals … wish to go and expertise these lovely and great cultures world wide,” he stated, including that “we have an effect on the factor that we’re attempting to expertise in a unfavorable manner.”

Protests in opposition to vacationers have elevated in frequency and measurement as residents — who received a snippet of their cities with out vacationers throughout the pandemic — have seen tourism return to, and even exceed, pre-pandemic ranges, stated Bernadett Papp, senior researcher at European Tourism Futures Institute within the Netherlands.

Residents sometimes select protests, as an alternative of different types of lobbying, as a result of they generate public consciousness, which ends up in media protection and societal stress for governments to behave, she stated. Barcelona and Amsterdam are examples of the place this has occurred, she added.

Locals additionally protest as a result of they have no idea whom to show to. “Tourism public policymaking is extremely fragmented, making it troublesome for residents to determine the suitable decision-makers to have interaction with,” stated Papp. “That is typically intensified by frustration and a lack of religion within the authorities on account of perceived inaction.”

Residents’ reactions are inclined to evolve as overtourism intensifies, stated Tatyana Tsukanova, a visiting professor and researcher at EHL Hospitality Enterprise College.

“They could tolerate it at first, then voice issues, generally flip confrontational, and finally seek for methods to adapt and push for constructive change,” she stated. “And alongside this path, vacationers typically develop into scapegoats.”

In July of 2024, protestors in Barcelona, Spain, threw objects, sprayed vacationers with water weapons and canned drinks, and used police-style tape to dam lodge entrances and sidewalk cafes. The message from the group was clear: “Vacationers go residence.”

Barcelona, and the Spanish island of Mallorca noticed water gun-toting protestors return in June, whereas there have been demonstrations in different components of Spain, Venice, Italy and Lisbon, Portugal, in response to the Related Press. Protestors in Barcelona set off firecrackers and opened a can of pink smoke, it stated.

Vacationers would be the seen issue guilty, however coverage gaps are the basis of the issue, stated Tsukanova.

Analysis exhibits that direct confrontations with vacationers could make vacationers really feel unwelcome, and thus lead some to rethink journeys, stated Tsukanova.

Nonetheless, this impact is often short-lived, she stated. Following protests all through Spain in 2024, vacationer arrivals elevated 4.1% within the first seven months of 2025, in response to its Nationwide Statistics Institute.

Protests can, nevertheless, generate consciousness in regards to the issues residents face, which might trigger vacationers to alter sure behaviors, equivalent to selecting accommodations over short-term leases, she stated.

However there may be little proof that protests have long-term results, stated Tsukanova.

Papp stated cities that reply to stress attributable to protests typically achieve this with ad-hoc insurance policies which can be extra symbolic than they’re significant.

“Such measures, in flip, reinforce societal issues and gas unfavorable perceptions of tourism,” she stated. “It’s a cycle.”

To forestall cities which can be “not made for residing, however for tourism,” locations can cut back short-term leases and impose considerably increased taxes on vacationers, stated Lionel Saul, visiting lecturer at EHL Hospitality Enterprise College.

Whereas lecturers are creating concepts for “regenerative journey” — a type of tourism that helps locals, reasonably than hinders, them — cities ought to embody native communities in tourism improvement, he stated.

Doug Lansky, a journey author and frequent speaker about tourism improvement, agreed, saying that native voices are sometimes lacking from important discussions, which hurts locations in the long term.

“If these residents had a seat on the desk — any desk — the place they felt that they voices have been being heard regionally, then they would not must march within the streets,” he stated.

Lansky is a proponent of “managed tourism,” citing limits equivalent to timed entries to sights, customer caps, and the restriction, however not elimination of, short-term rental markets.

The trade-off, he stated, is much less serendipity than vacationers had previously.

“It isn’t as enjoyable … you are not going to be losing your day standing in line,” he stated. However “it may profit all.”