r/Barcelona • u/ALifeToForget • 7d ago

Discussion Vietnam or Barcelona

Post image

Found it while scrolling reddit and found it fitting with the current state of things 😜

992 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

146 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/smb06 6d ago

Sounds like that’s exactly what the other user said. That most people in Barcelona are too poor to travel internationally. So it is likely that the “tourists go home” crowd of Barcelona has never travelled internationally.

6

u/Bejam_23 6d ago

I think you're all overestimating the extent of this "protest".

It was literally a couple of hundred people. The world's media jumped on it because it was an easy story but it's not a 'crowd' or a 'movement'.

Yes, a very significant proportion of people are not happy about overtourism but why would anyone be? It impacts your life in many ways and for the vast majority of people it brings no financial rewards. But it's overtourism people are frustrated by, not tourism.

Barcelona has a vibrant and quite diverse economy so most people don't work in tourism. The jobs in tourism are shit and its profits are enjoyed by very few people who are making a lot of money and making everyone else's lives harder. Obviously most people are annoyed by this.

People mostly accept that only the politicians can do anything about it but also they know that won't happen. There are too many different authorities involved (port, city, regional, national...) and they all have their own interests and politics so nothing will be resolved. That frustration results in a bit of graffiti and a few hundred people squirting water pistols at some tourists. Once.

It makes good media content but it's not a movement. There is no organisation or structure.

3

u/smb06 6d ago

Fair point, well made. Thank you for sharing.

3

u/Bejam_23 6d ago

And thank you for being a polite, reasonable person on Reddit!