by Despite the spring and summer of protests from the Canary Islands to the Balearics, and from Barcelona to Cádiz, not all parts of Spain are awash with crowds of tourists or, for that matter, with activists on the beach, activists who are waving the water demanding an end to it. unchecked mass tourism.
As the high season approaches on the Cíes islands, off the northwest region of Galicia, a young cormorant keeps a close eye on visitors as they wade across a sea wave. A condor passes, almost steadily, above the lighthouse, looking for an early lunch, perhaps based on the lizard.
Just off the quartz-white beach, a pair of oil-skinned fishermen pull clams from the depths of the Atlantic while another boat skims over the smooth waters.
Such sobering scenes are a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the regional government imposed a daily limit on the number of visitors seven years ago, thousands of people would turn up every day of the summer, putting enormous pressure on the archipelago, which is part of the Galicia Atlantic Islands national park.
Today, 1,800 visitors can visit the islands every day from May 15 to September 15, after which the cap drops to 450 per day. Before setting off, all visitors must obtain a QR code from the regional government’s website and then pay €25 (£21) for the ferry journey there and back.
“There were too many people there before,” says José Antonio Fernández Bouzas, the park’s director. “But now people understand the need for the cap and respect and appreciate it. We need the access controls to protect the area, but they also mean people can enjoy their visits.”
Although some people enjoy a good cry on TripAdvisor – the water is too cold; a bandit seagull ate my chocolate pastry; it gets very crowded at the picturesque lighthouse – Fernández Bouzas is convinced that the decision to limit visitors was the right one.
“That reduction worked. You have influence because people like something that feels more exclusive,” he says. “People used to book their places on the day, but now they book them three months in advance. They really plan their visits. People are also coming all year round, when it was just July and August.”
Ecotourism, he says, is the best way to manage the difficult balance between protecting the natural beauty of the islands and bringing socio-economic development to the surrounding area: “It’s about preserving them so that people will be able to enjoy them – and the focus should be on tourism. the protection and defense of the natural world that underpins its business.”
While it may be tempting to see the visitor cap as a possible answer to the over-tourism crisis, experts are quick to dismiss the idea. They argue that while limiting the number of visitors to work in the Cíes, it will do nothing to tackle the issues that have fueled protests around Spain and beyond.
“If we try to put caps on the number of people entering a city – as they did in Venice – then you turn the city into a theme park,” says Claudio Milano, a researcher in social anthropology at the University of Barcelona. department.
“What you have in Charles Cíes and Machu Picchu and in these large national parks works in parks, where we need a careful resource because of the environment. If you do that in a city, the message you’re sending is that this is a theme park.”
Milano says this year’s “domino effect” demonstrations in mainland Spain, the Balearics and the Canary Islands show the extent to which tourism has become a focus of socio-economic and political complaints and concerns.
“We have to remember that these movements are anti-tourism and not anti-tourism – that’s the key and the big difference,” he says. “More than meets the eye, it feels like a moment when tourism has become political in different contexts.”
Milano says over-tourism is only the tip of the iceberg; below the surface are the major problems of housing, precarious employment and the climate emergency.
“If we didn’t have housing problems in cities like Seville, Málaga, Cádiz and Barcelona, Airbnb would be a minor problem,” he says. “We also need employment reforms. If jobs in tourism weren’t so precarious and seasonal, we wouldn’t have these problems. What we need to do now is to solve these tourism related problems. But this is not just about reducing the number of flights; it’s also about not continuing to grow.”
Linda Osti, senior lecturer in tourism at Bangor University, says tourism can often be a scapegoat for wider social ills.
“There is a conflict between the tourists and the local people and sometimes local communities feel that it is the tourism and the tourists,” she says. “But more than that, the economic sector and the way things are changing is not planned well enough.”
Osti says the intense media coverage that has attracted the protests in places like Barcelona in recent months has led to demonstrations elsewhere that have shown a deep disconnect between local and regional governments and the governments they serve.
“What is missing is communication between the local authorities and members of the local community so that they understand what they want – what their problems are,” she said. “The local authorities must let them know that they are working – and how they are working.”
With different destinations at different stages of tourism development – cities have other sources of income, and the economies of some Mediterranean islands rely heavily on income from holidaymakers – there is no easy solution, says Osti.
“A lot depends on the percentage of the population involved in the tourism sector,” she says. “We need to diversify away from that or include people in tourism in a fairer and more equitable way. But communication is the first thing; it is clear from all these protests that there is no trust in the local authorities and local governments. Trust needs to be restored and communication needs to be restored.”
Sitting on a boat off the Cíes archipelago, Fernández Bouzas is blunt when asked about the dangers of putting profit before protection in the blind pursuit of tourism. “It’s about preserving these islands so people can enjoy them,” he says. “If you don’t preserve them, there’s no point. You would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs after a few days.”
