Travelers to Europe, mark your calendars (and bring your raincoats). On June 15, activist groups across southern Europe are planning to stage protests against tourism. Although the precise form of those demonstrations has not been decided, it’s a pretty safe bet that water guns will be involved.
At workshops held in Barcelona last weekend that brought together about 120 representatives from Venice; Lisbon; Palermo, Italy; and a dozen other cities, leaders of the Southern Europe Network Against Touristification, called for a coordinated day of actions to raise awareness about what they called “the urgent need to limit the growth of tourism.” The tactics discussed included marches, picketing at airports, obstructing tourists’ entry to historic sites and blockading tour buses.
Driven by rising rents, housing shortages, pollution and overcrowded public transportation, the call signals a continuation — and possibly an escalation — of the demonstrations that erupted across Europe in 2024.
At a protest along Barcelona’s famed Las Ramblas boulevard last July, a handful of participants pulled out water guns and began squirting tourists. The tactic attracted global media attention, which is why, this time around, the activists have adopted the toys as an effective symbol of their resistance.
In Barcelona, where the municipal government has taken measures to reduce the impact of overtourism (the city received 15.5 million tourists in 2024), such as curbing new hotel construction and banning Airbnb after 2028, tourism officials greeted the news of the planned June 15 protests with dismay.
“It’s unfortunate that global anti-tourism movements chose to announce their proposals in Barcelona, when Barcelona is the city that is doing the most for sustainable urban tourism,” said Mateu Hernández, director general of Barcelona Tourism.
With international travel expected to increase this year, the summer of 2025 looks likely to see other protests proliferate. Already, in the Canary Islands, a demonstration against tourism is scheduled for May 18, with organizers suggesting they will move beyond the kind of marches that brought 60,000 to the streets last year to also include occupying what they called “symbolic” tourist sites.
Participants in the Barcelona workshops capped their gathering with their own symbolic protest. On Sunday morning, the activists met outside the Sagrada Família church (the city’s most popular tourist attraction), surrounded a tour bus filled with passengers, hung a banner announcing the June 15 demonstrations from its windshield, and squirted it with water guns.
“We don’t want to hurt anyone,” said Elena Boschi, an English-language teacher and activist from Genoa, Italy. “We just want them to be mindful of the impact that their presence is having on these places and the people who live in them.”
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