Why Locals Are Fighting Back Against Mass Tourism

Why Locals Are Fighting Back Against Mass Tourism

In Barcelona, a group of residents recently sprayed water pistols at tourists sitting at outdoor restaurant tables. On the Spanish island of Mallorca, protesters staged a fake beach invasion, lying down on the sand and refusing to move. In Venice, activists have been known to glue posters onto cruise ship windows reading: "Tourists go home."

These are not fringe extremists. They are ordinary people who have watched their neighborhoods transform into open-air hotel lobbies, their rent prices double, and their local bakeries replaced by souvenir shops selling the same refrigerator magnets.

The standard story about mass tourism goes like this: It's a problem of too many people in one place at one time. The solution, according to governments and industry groups, is "managing flows" and "spreading visitors out." But Claudio Milano, Marina Novelli, and Antonio Paolo Russo, researchers from the University of Barcelona and other institutions, spent seven years studying anti-tourism activism in Barcelona. Their 2024 paper in Tourism Geographies argues that the real story is much uglier (Milano et al., 2024).

The problem, they found, is not crowds. It is power.

What Seven Years of Watching Barcelona Actually Revealed

Milano and his colleagues conducted longitudinal qualitative ethnographic research in Barcelona between 2017 and 2024. That means they embedded themselves in the city's anti-tourism movements, attending protests, interviewing activists, and watching how the battle over tourism unfolded in real time. Barcelona is an ideal laboratory for this kind of work. The city went from a regional tourist destination to one of Europe's most visited cities in less than two decades. It now receives more than 30 million visitors per year, roughly 20 times its resident population.

The researchers drew on anthropology and critical geography literature to frame what they observed. But the most important finding is not theoretical. It is that local activists are not protesting tourism itself. They are protesting a specific economic system that uses tourism as its primary tool.

"Mass tourism," the authors write, is best understood as a phenomenon. "Touristification" is the process by which neighborhoods are remade to serve visitors. And "overtourism" is the regime that results when the first two become permanent features of urban life (Milano et al., 2024). This three-part framework matters because it shifts the blame from individual tourists to the structures that make mass tourism inevitable.

The Inconvenient Truth Nobody Wants to Admit

The paper's title contains a phrase that should make industry executives uncomfortable: "inconvenient truths." Here is the first one: Tourism is not a neutral industry. It is deeply embedded in neoliberal capitalism, which means it prioritizes capital accumulation over community well-being.

Milano and his coauthors found that the tourism industry in Barcelona operates through "strongly skewed power relations" and is characterized by "exclusionary and resource-degrading agency" (Milano et al., 2024). Translated into plain language: The people who profit from tourism are not the people who live with its consequences. Hotel chains, real estate investors, and platform companies like Airbnb extract enormous value. Local residents absorb the costs: higher rent, crowded public spaces, noise, and the slow erasure of their own culture.

The activists the researchers interviewed do not see themselves as anti-tourism. They see themselves as pro-housing, pro-community, and pro-public space. They are fighting for the right to remain in their own city.

How Touristification Eats a Neighborhood Alive

The process follows a grimly predictable pattern. It starts with a few short-term rentals. Then more. Then landlords realize they can make more money renting to tourists than to families. Then local shops catering to residents close, replaced by businesses that serve visitors. Then the neighborhood becomes a destination. Then the city government, eager for tax revenue, promotes it. Then more tourists come. Then the cycle repeats.

Milano and his colleagues observed this process in multiple Barcelona neighborhoods, including the Gothic Quarter, El Raval, and Gràcia. They found that touristification does not just change the physical landscape. It changes who belongs. Long-term residents begin to feel like strangers in their own streets. The public spaces that once held community life become zones of consumption.

The researchers note that this process is not unique to Barcelona. It is happening in Amsterdam, Lisbon, Prague, and dozens of other cities across Southern Europe. But Barcelona is a case study in how fast it can happen and how fierce the backlash can become.

Why Activists Are Winning the Argument

One of the most striking findings in the paper is that anti-tourism activism is becoming more sophisticated. Early protests were chaotic and sometimes violent. But the movement the researchers tracked in Barcelona has developed clear demands, coherent messaging, and political strategy.

Activists now call for specific policy changes: caps on tourist accommodation, limits on cruise ship arrivals, protections for rent-controlled housing, and stronger regulations on short-term rental platforms. They have also formed coalitions with housing rights groups, environmental organizations, and labor unions. The result is a movement that is harder to dismiss as just a few angry locals.

The researchers found that the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily accelerated this shift. During lockdowns, cities emptied of tourists, and residents reclaimed public spaces. Many activists told the researchers that the pandemic proved tourism was not inevitable. It was a choice. And cities could choose differently.

What the Research Does Not Prove

This is where the picture gets complicated. Milano and his coauthors are careful to note that their research is focused on Southern European destinations, which have specific histories of urban development, housing policy, and governance. The dynamics in a city like Bangkok or Bali might be different. The paper also does not provide a simple formula for how to balance tourism and local life. It is a critique of the current system, not a blueprint for a better one.

The researchers also do not claim that all tourism is bad. They distinguish between mass tourism and other forms of travel. Small-scale, community-based tourism that is owned and operated by local residents does not produce the same harms. The problem is not travel. It is the industrial scale at which tourism has been organized and the concentration of its profits into a small number of hands.

There is also an open question about what happens after anti-tourism movements win. If Barcelona were to sharply reduce its tourist numbers, what would replace the lost revenue? The activists the researchers interviewed have ideas: more investment in public goods, support for local businesses, and a shift toward a more diversified economy. But these ideas have not been tested at scale.

The Three Categories That Change How You See the Problem

Milano and his colleagues offer a framework that is useful beyond Barcelona. They distinguish between:

• ▸Mass tourism as a phenomenon: the sheer volume of visitors, which overwhelms infrastructure and public space.
• ▸Touristification as a process: the systematic transformation of neighborhoods to serve tourists, which displaces residents and local businesses.
• ▸Overtourism as a regime: a permanent state of tourism dominance that reshapes entire cities around visitor needs.

This framework matters because it reveals that the problem is not just about numbers. A city could reduce tourist numbers and still suffer from touristification if the underlying economic incentives remain unchanged. The regime of overtourism is sustained by real estate speculation, platform capitalism, and government policies that prioritize tourism revenue over resident well-being.

What This Actually Means

The research by Milano, Novelli, and Russo does not offer easy solutions. But it clarifies the stakes. Here is what their findings imply for cities, travelers, and anyone who cares about the future of urban life:

• ▸Anti-tourism activism is not a fad. It is a political response to a real economic problem. Cities that dismiss protesters as irrational are missing the point. The activists have identified a structural injustice, and they are organizing to fix it.

• ▸The solution is not "sustainable tourism" as the industry currently defines it. Most sustainable tourism initiatives focus on reducing environmental impact while maintaining growth. That is not enough. The research suggests that the real issue is who owns and controls tourism infrastructure, not just how many carbon emissions it produces.

• ▸Short-term rental platforms are a primary driver of touristification. The activists in Barcelona have made regulation of Airbnb and similar companies a central demand. The researchers found that these platforms accelerate the conversion of residential housing into tourist accommodation, which drives up rents and pushes out long-term residents.

• ▸Governments are not neutral actors. The paper documents how city governments in Barcelona have simultaneously promoted tourism and tried to manage its negative effects. This contradiction is built into the system. Tourism generates tax revenue and jobs, which gives governments an incentive to keep it growing even when residents suffer.

• ▸Residents want to stay in their cities. That is the core demand of anti-tourism activism. It is not about hating visitors. It is about the right to housing, the right to public space, and the right to a community that is not designed for people passing through.

The water pistols and the fake beach invasions are not the real story. They are symptoms. The real story is that people are fighting for the right to belong somewhere. And they are starting to win.