‘It’s Tourist Hunting Season’: The Street Art That’s Seething About Mass Tourism

By earthnews
4 months Ago

‘It’s Tourist Hunting Season’: The Street Art That’s Seething About Mass Tourism

The writing is on the wall across Spain.

Residents who are becoming increasingly frustrated with the negative impact of mass tourism on their daily lives ― including but certainly not limited to higher rents and real estate prices ― are taking to the streets to voice their fury.

Demonstrations have this year mushroomed across the second most-visited country in the world ― from Barcelona with its water-gun-touting activists in the north to Malaga in the south, from the Canary Islands archipelago off the coast of northwestern Africa to the Balearic Islands of Ibiza, Mallorca and Menorca in the Mediterranean Sea.

Protesters in Malaga in June 2024 with a banner that when translated into English reads, “Malaga to live, not to survive.”

SOPA Images via Getty Images

Some protesters, however, have also taken to leaving more permanent reminders of their anger in the form of graffiti, street art and sticker campaigns.

“It’s Tourist Hunting Season,” “Tourists Go Home” and “Fuck Airbnb” are among the scathing messages that have been photographed daubed on walls or printed on stickers across the two biggest cities — the capital Madrid and Barcelona — this year alone.

In Malaga, stickers bearing anti-tourist phrases ― such as “go fucking home” and “this used to be my home” ― were earlier this year placed around tourism areas in which families once lived.

Meanwhile, someone on the island of Mallorca last summer installed fake signs in English that warned tourists of “dangerous jellyfish” and “falling rocks.” But the small print in Catalan revealed there wasn’t actually any danger and that it was just mass tourism they wanted to prevent.

Here’s a look at some of the anti-tourism protest art in Spain from this year and before:

Madrid, 2024.