Brit holidaymakers in Costa del Sol told to go home in new anti-tourist campaign
Angry residents in Costa del Sol have told holidaymakers to go home in the latest instance of anti-tourism in Spain.
Earlier this month angry locals in Tenerife made their feelings clear with graffiti calling for tourists to leave slapped up in and around the southern resort of Palm Mar.
Now people living in the centre of Malaga have become the latest to raise their voice against the problems caused by the throngs of visitors they say have impacted on their lives. Stickers have been plastered over the front of tourist apartment blocks with messages in Spanish saying: 'f**k off from here' and 'stinking of tourists.'
Other messages have appeared, referring to the same problems highlighted by Tenerife residents about the lack of affordable accommodation caused by mass tourism. Messages read: 'this used to be my house' and ‘a family used to live here’.
Anti-tourist graffiti appeared in Tenerife earlier this month (Canarian Weekly)
The graffiti told tourists to go home (Canarian Weekly)Malaga bar owner Dani Drunko claims he was recently told to leave his home of ten years because it is becoming a short-term holiday let. “Everyone has joined the cause and got really involved, so much so that they’re printing off stickers and putting them all over streets in the centre," he said of the sticker campaign.
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“I live in a neighbourhood of Malaga called Fuente Olletas and was told a few weeks ago the owner wouldn’t be renewing my rental contract and I had to leave because the property was going to readapted for tourist lets. Every day I’m receiving photos of new stickers and people that are making it go viral. There’s a lot of movement because citizens are sick of the situation. I only proposed the idea of the phrases, I lit the fuse.”
Dani Perez, secretary general of the left-wing PSOE party in Malaga, said many apartments in the city now have coded key holders synonymous with holiday lets. “You walk along the streets of Malaga and it’s practically impossible to find a residential building which hasn’t got a padlock and passcode," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Mr Drunko, whose bar Drunk-O-Rama is considered to be one of the best places to go out at night in Malaga, said the messages were not anti-tourist, but anti-locals being forced from their homes. He said: “We would like to point out that we have nothing against tourists or tourism but are opposed to being kicked out of our homes to make way for tourist apartments and the fact that the town hall, which belongs to all of Malaga's people, doesn’t do anything.”
The sunny seaside resort is a huge draw for Brits (Getty Images)Juan Luis Gomez, a Costa del Sol based lawyer, is one of the critics of the campaign who argues that tourism is essential to the city's survival. “The same people who are against tourism then want work, as if we depended here for our livelihoods on the aerospace industry. It’s one thing to regulate tourism and another to reject tourism," he said.
The messages in English left earlier this month on walls and benches in and around Palm Mar in southern Tenerife included ‘My misery your paradise’ and ‘Average salary in Canary Islands is 1,200 euros.’ Locals on the island have complained they face rising rents pushed by the lack of affordable housing because so many properties are rented only to tourists on short-term lets.
Like the Canary Islands, the Costa del Sol is one of the most popular areas for British holidaymakers in Spain. In February last year Malaga approved fines of up to £650 for revellers caught walking around naked, carrying inflatable sex dolls or wearing huge plastic penises on their heads. By-laws in the Costa del Sol capital already banned the use of megaphones or the consumption of alcohol on the street.
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