Residents on Spain’s Costa del Sol have become the latest to vent their fury over the way tourism has affected their lives. Angry locals in Tenerife made their feelings clear earlier this month with graffiti calling for tourists to go home in and around the southern resort of Palm Mar.
Now people living in the centre of Malaga have become the latest to raise their voice against the problems caused by the hordes of visitors they say have impacted on their lives.
Stickers have been plastered over the front of tourist apartment blocks with messages in Spanish saying: “F*** off from here” and “Stinking of Tourists”.
Others that have appeared, alluding to the same problems expressed by Tenerife residents about the lack of affordable accommodation caused by mass tourism, say: “This used to be my house” and “A family used to live here”.
A Malaga bar owner who was recently told he had to leave the home he has lived in for the past 10 years so it can be used by tourists staying on short-term lets, has been linked to the campaign.
He recently organised a social media initiative proposing customers come up with alternatives revolving around the AT signs on the front of holiday apartment blocks, short for Apartamento Turistico in Spanish, in a play on words game.
They came up with imaginative proposals which included ‘A Tu Puta casa’ and ApesTando a Turista – English for ‘F##k off home’ and ‘Stinking of Tourist.’
The bar owner, known as Dani Drunko, said overnight as he admitted things had got a “bit out of hand”: “Everyone has joined the cause and got really involved, so much so that they’re printing off stickers and putting them all over streets in the centre.”
Revealing his own accommodation plight and saying he had friends in the same boat, he told respected Malaga-based paper Sur: “I live in a neighbourhood of Malaga called Fuente Olletas and was told a few weeks ago the owner wouldn’t be renewing my rental contract and I had to leave because the property was going to readapted for tourist lets.
“Every day I’m receiving photos of new stickers and people that are making it go viral. There’s a lot of movement because citizens are sick of the situation. I only proposed the idea of the phrases, I lit the fuse.”
Dani Perez, Secretary General of the left-wing PSOE party in Malaga, flagging up one of the stickers plastered over a tourist apartment block with coded key holders by the front door, said in a blast on X formerly Twitter: “All this used to be the centre, as this sticker says next to several tourist apartments.
“You walk along the streets of Malaga and it’s practically impossible to find a residential building which hasn’t got a padlock and passcode.”
He added in an attack on Malaga’s right-wing mayor Paco de la Torre: “Malaga’s mayor is not lifting a finger for the people who live here, expelling them from the city where they were born.”
Mr Drunko, whose bar Drunk-O-Rama is famed as one of the best places to go out at night in Malaga and offers live music, tried to distance himself today from the idea he was being anti-tourist after the rude stickers were publicised in local press.
He said: “We would like to point out that we have nothing against tourists or tourism but are opposed to being kicked out of our homes to make way for tourist apartments and the fact that the town hall, which belongs to all of Malaga’s people, doesn’t do anything.”
Critic Juan Luis Gomez, a Costa del Sol based lawyer, responded by saying: “The same people who are against tourism then want work, as if we depended here for our livelihoods on the aerospace industry.
“It’s one thing to regulate tourism and another to reject tourism.”
But another local added in a sarcastic-laden post on X formerly Twitter: “Who would have thought that kicking people out of their homes so they could be used as tourist apartments was going to produce a negative impact from local people about them.”
The messages in English left earlier this month on walls and benches in and around Palm Mar in southern Tenerife included ‘My misery your paradise’ and ‘Average salary in Canary Islands is 1,200 euros.’
Locals have complained they face rising rents pushed by the lack of affordable housing because so many properties are rented only to tourists on short-term lets.
Like the Canary Islands, the Costa del Sol is one of the most popular areas for British holidaymakers in Spain.
In February last year Malaga approved fines of up to POUNDS 650 for revellers caught walking around naked, carrying inflatable sex dolls or wearing huge plastic penises on their heads.
By-laws in the Costa del Sol capital already banned the use of megaphones or the consumption of alcohol on the street.
