Anger at tourists
Catalans shoot at holidaymakers with squirt guns
Angry demonstrators in Barcelona used water pistols to try to drive tourists out of restaurants on Saturday.
Armed with water pistols, the demonstrators took aim at diners in the busy restaurants on the popular Las Ramblas promenade.
The wet and tumultuous scenes were part of a larger demonstration against mass tourism, in which around 2,800 people took to the streets under the slogan "Enough! Let's set limits to tourism" took to the streets.
"Tourists go home"
Protest posters carried English messages such as: "Dear Tourist, Balconing is Fun! ("Dear Tourist, jump off the balcony") or "Tourists Go Home".
According to reports from "MailOnline", the demonstrators aimed their water pistols at foreigners dining on the terraces of the popular tourist restaurants in Las Ramblas.
Fortunately, if you look at the photos, they were probably just children's toy guns with a very weak jet of water, which hardly caused any damage.
Sharp rise in the cost of living
That was probably not the purpose of the action. Rather, the protest was intended to draw attention to the immense rise in the cost of living.
Many Barcelona residents complain that the interests of tourists are often enforced at the expense of the locals. Mass tourism may bring money, but it also causes major social and infrastructural problems.
"Local stores have to close to make room for facilities that don't meet the real needs of our neighborhood," complains musician Issa Miralles, for example. "Rents have risen so much that many can no longer afford their homes."
These protests are part of a series of similar actions that took place in the Canary Islands at the beginning of the year.
This article has been automatically translated,
read the original article here.
Da dieser Artikel älter als 18 Monate ist, ist zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt kein Kommentieren mehr möglich.
Wir laden Sie ein, bei einer aktuelleren themenrelevanten Story mitzudiskutieren: Themenübersicht.
Bei Fragen können Sie sich gern an das Community-Team per Mail an forum@krone.at wenden.