Residents of Spain’s Costa del Sol have become the latest to vent their fury at the way tourism has affected their lives, with stickers plastered on holiday rental apartments.
Angry Tenerife locals made their feelings clear earlier this month with graffiti asking tourists to return to their homes in and around the southern resort of Palm Mar.
Now residents of central Malaga have become the latest to speak out against the problems caused by the hordes of visitors who they say have impacted their lives.
In the city, which is popular with British tourists, stickers have appeared on the facades of tourist apartment blocks with messages in Spanish saying: “Fuck you out of here” and “it stinks of tourists.”
Others who have appeared, alluding to the same problems expressed by Tenerife residents over the lack of affordable accommodation caused by mass tourism, say: ‘This was my house’ and ‘A family lived here’.
One of the stickers said ‘Such a Tourist’.
Locals have been devising alternatives around the AT signs on the facades of holiday apartment blocks, short for Apartamento Turístico in Spanish, in a play on words.
The residents of the center of Malaga have become the latest to raise their voices against the problems caused by crowds of visitors.
A Málaga bar owner who was recently told he had to leave the house he had lived in for the last ten years so it could be used by tourists staying in short-term rentals, has been linked to the campaign .
It recently organized an initiative on social networks proposing to customers to find alternatives around the AT signs on the facades of holiday apartment blocks, abbreviation for Tourist Apartment in Spanish, in a play on words.
They came up with imaginative proposals that included ‘A Tu Puta Casa’ and PesTando a Turista.
The owner of the bar, known as Dani Drunko, said during the night that things had gotten “a little out of control”: “Everyone has joined the cause and got very involved, so much so that they are printing stickers and sticking them all up “. on downtown streets.
Revealing his own accommodation situation and saying he had friends in the same boat, he told the respected Sur de Malaga newspaper: “I live in a neighborhood in Malaga called Fuente Olletas and a few weeks ago I was told that the landlord would not renew my rental contract and I had to leave because the property was going to be repurposed for tourist rental.
‘Every day I receive photos of new stickers and people making them viral. There is a lot of movement because citizens are fed up with the situation. I just proposed the idea of the phrases, I lit the fuse.’
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Dani Pérez, general secretary of the left-wing PSOE party in Malaga, pointing to one of the stickers plastered on a block of tourist apartments with coded key chains next to the main door, said in an outburst on X, formerly Twitter: “This all used to be the center, as this sticker says next to several tourist apartments.
“You go through the streets of Malaga and it is practically impossible to find a residential building that does not have a lock and password.”
In an attack on the right-wing mayor of Malaga, Paco de la Torre, he added: “The mayor of Malaga does not lift a finger for the people who live here, expelling them from the city where they were born.”
Drunko, whose bar Drunk-O-Rama is famous for being one of the best nightspots in Malaga and featuring live music, today attempted to distance itself from the idea that it was being anti-tourist following the rude sticker advertising. . in the local press.
He said: “We want to point out that we have nothing against tourists or tourism, but we are against being kicked out of our homes to make way for tourist apartments and that the city council, which belongs to all Malaga residents, does nothing .’
Critic Juan Luis Gómez, a lawyer from the Costa del Sol, responded by saying: ‘The same people who are against tourism then want work, as if here we depended on the aerospace industry for our livelihood.
“It is one thing to regulate tourism and another to reject it.”
But another local added in a sarcasm-laden post on local?”.
Messages in English left earlier this month on walls and benches in and around Palm Mar, southern Tenerife, included “My misery, your paradise” and “The average salary in the Canary Islands is 1,200 euros.”
Locals have complained that they face rising rents driven by a lack of affordable housing because many properties are rented only to tourists on short-term rentals.
Like the Canary Islands, the Costa del Sol is one of the most popular areas for British tourists in Spain.
In February last year, Malaga passed fines of up to £650 for revelers caught walking around naked, carrying inflatable sex dolls or wearing huge plastic penises on their heads.
The ordinance of the capital of the Costa del Sol already prohibits the use of megaphones or the consumption of alcohol in the street.