The yawning gap between locals’ and visitors’ consumption is stoking long-standing resentments ahead of an election.

As rain poured into Catalonia’s parched capital, the tourists did, too.

Yet while a damp April brought some relief to the drought-stricken Spanish region — which has been living under rain-starved skies for over three years — the crescendoing tourist season did not.

After all, spring is when visitors start spilling into Barcelona’s streets each morning from cruise ships, hotels and Airbnbs — and consuming considerably more of the city’s water than the average resident, threatening to push Barcelona’s water supply to the breaking point.

The disconnect has locals fulminating. While Catalan municipalities have faced water consumption limits since the region declared a drought emergency in early February, the tourism sector has largely escaped restrictions.

  • ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    I live in a very, very touristy area. I just accept that I live somewhere other people want to see, and there’s real consequences to that. The consequences are significant. Traffic, crowding, high prices, shitty restaurants, etc. There are benefits though. And not all tourist jobs are bad. Yeah they’re not engineering jobs, but to the people who live off those jobs they are happy they exist. It’s easy for someone who is privileged to say no one wants those jobs.

    • claudiop@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      How can people be happy about the massification of tourists when they went from any job paying for a flat to almost no job paying for one?

      At least in Portugal this was not a one-generation-something-years kind of thing. It took like 10-15 years to go from anyone can afford a flat to almost nobody can.

      • baru@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        It took like 10-15 years to go from anyone can afford a flat to almost nobody can.

        It’s as if nothing could be done about it. One country blames tourists, others immigrants. In Netherlands the most popular party said for ages that it’s useless to plan ahead. Such remarks are ignored. People go for the populist remarks. Blame some group of people.