It may surprise you but Europe has recently been in a severe heat wave known as “Lucifer.” The locals and people living there are sick and tired of it and are showing some frustration. This is due to the mass number of tourists coming in each year. This has led to anti-tourism protests and new laws being established.
At the head of these overhauled and populated tourist sites are Spain. “They had a record 75.6 million tourists last year, including 17 million in Catalonia alone.” Now that right there is ridiculous… this small sliver of land is not big enough to be holding that many people all at the same time.
“It was once dubbed the capital of cool, but these days visitors to Barcelona can expect a quite frosty welcome.” “The city’s love affair with tourism has come to a bitter end, with hooded youths spraying a tourist bus with slogans, and strike chaos at the city’s airport. On Wednesday, Segway tours and electric scooters were banned from the Old City and the seafront, in a move that will be applauded by most citizens.”
An Arran spokesperson told the BBC: “Today’s model of tourism expels people from their neighborhoods and harms the environment.” -Arran, the youth wing of the radical CUP (Popular Unity Candidacy). Now they might not be the only ones with an opinion on this topic. In fact, the Spanish Prime minister Mariano Rajoy thinks different and that this group is full of extremists.
Therefore no one is calling for an end to all tourism “But there is a sense that it has come to dominate and distort an ancient and once industrially diverse city. ” “It is responsible for around 17% of the city’s GDP and directly employs some 90,000 people.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/aug/11/barcelona-spain-anti-tourism-protest-segway-ban
Protests in Spain continue as the unrest of the separation of Catalonia and Spain. It’s been reported from several news sources including The Sun that the people and civilians of Catalonia want separation of Spain and their tyrannical government.
The leaders of Catalonia’s government were refused freedom from Spain. Which could mean that “Madrid/Spain takeover Catalans regional government, police force, TV, and finances.” Now the Catalonia Leader Carles Puigdemont gave a speech after joining the afternoon protest. He stated “I ask the parliament to meet in a plenary session during which we, the representatives of the citizens’ sovereignty, will be able to decide over this attempt to liquidate our government and our democracy and act in consequence.”
Spain then “announced that it will move to dismiss Catalonia’s separatist government and call fresh elections which has angered supporters of independence” As you might have guessed protesters took to the streets again and showed how angry and distasteful they are. It then came out that the Catalonia government would be arresting Puigdemont. It is said by police that “450,000 people had joined in demonstration before Puigdemont said the region would not accept Madrid’s plans.” Now this does seem cruel in so many cases but Spain will be having an election, but that is also going to be controlled in his favor. So people of Catalan might become even more aggrevated.
A picture demonstrating just how mant people were and are against this so called president of Spain.
The protesting is just part of the story though the media coverage is another story so checkout my other blog post.
Conclusion
Now I know Spain is just one part of Europe and this tourist crisis is happening everywhere. This including Italy and several other countries in Europe. But I chose Spain because it had other protests including separation I just don’t know how well these protests are being covered. The last news article I saw was from October. So maybe the people are done protesting or the news just isn’t doing a good job of covering it. Either way the people of Catalan are being wronged.
Ethan Townzen 
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