Irish face fresh holiday hell after locals target visitors in new Spain demo

ORGANISERS of the historic anti mass tourism protest in Majorca have apologised for the abuse directed at holidaymakers.

Foreign visitors were booed and jeered by some locals among the estimated 15,000 people who joined in Saturday’s demo as they ate evening meals on terraces in the island capital Palma’s Weyler Square.

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Marchers were also heard chanting ‘Tourists go home’ as they passed through the central square on the 20-minute route from the park where the protest began to iconic street Paseo del Borne.

The banners campaigners carried included one with the offensive message: “Salvem Mallorca, guiris arruix’ which in Catalan Spanish means ‘Let’s save Majorca, foreigners out’.

It played on the colloquial Spanish expression Guiri which is used to portray northern European tourists like the British holidaymakers partying in Magaluf, usually in a mildly offensive way.

Another placard said in Catalan: “Where you look they’re all guiris.”

The Palma protest was organised by Banc del Temps, a group which hails from the inland Majorcan town of Sencelles and has claimed 25,000 people joined in the demo although government officials have put the figure at around 10,000.

Spokesman Javier Barbero said of the targeting of some holidaymakers: “We didn’t want to have a go at tourists and it shouldn’t have happened.”

But he added, promising a repeat of Saturday’s action: “This is just the start of things.

“If measures aren’t taken we will continue taking to the streets until we see action.”

Another campaign group that took part in Saturday’s demo, held under the slogan ‘Majorca is not up for sale,’ described the organisers afterwards as “heroes”, saying: “You are heroes and you have made history.

“Thank you for leading 25,000 people and making it a very well organised and civic demonstration.

“Now our government should open its doors wide open to you and call you to a meeting so that you can present your and our demands.

“With 25,000 people behind you, you are an organisation that should be received this week by Balearic Islands’ government president Marga Prohens.

“She should take note and put urgent measures in place.”

The manifesto Banc del Temps made public when protestors had finished marching through Palma included the demand only people who had been living in the Balearic Islands for five years could buy property as well as a moratorium on holiday rentals.

One of its speakers said: “This island should be a place where our children can grow up with safety and dignity, with controlled tourism that doesn’t condition our lives.”

The protest, the largest of its kind since last month’s Canary Islands’ demos against mass tourism, was the second in 24 hours in the Balearic Islands.

DRINKING BAN IGNORED BY TOURISTS

On Friday night around 1,000 protestors took part in a demo in Ibiza to vent their anger over the effects of mass tourism.

Campaigners held up banners saying ‘We don’t want an island of cement’ and ‘Tourism, yes but not like this’ as they massed outside Ibiza Council’s HQ.

The organisers of the Ibiza demo, a group called Prou Eivissa, met with Ibiza’s president Vicent Mari before taking to the streets as British tourists across the other side of the island in San Antonio drank themselves silly and dismissed a street drinking ban which could see them hit with fines of up to £1,300 if caught.

The protestors’ demands included a limit on the number of vehicles that can enter the island in summer and a ban on using taxpayers’ cash to promote Ibiza as a tourist destination.

AIRPORT PROTEST DISCUSSED

A letter was read out at the end of the protest from an Ibiza-born woman who linked her decision to leave the island with her family and move to the Spanish mainland to a “destructive” tourist model that had led to “more cars, more tourists and more incivility.”

Another Majorcan-based association, called Menys Turisme, which translates into English as ‘Less Tourism, More Life’ is currently taking proposals for another more radical protest which could involve mass gathering outside hotels or on an iconic island beach.

The idea of an airport protest in the peak tourist season which involves collapsing Palma Airport with cars has also been discussed.

Anti-tourist graffiti has appeared in both Majorca and Tenerife in recent months.

Some foreign holidaymakers have shown their support for the issues raised by campaigners but others have accused them of biting the hand that feeds them.

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