Why Barcelona locals spray water guns at tourists

HostIt's pretty hard to miss the videos lately of people sitting outside at cafes in Barcelona, minding their own business, when suddenly they get soaked by a group of locals with water guns. It looks like a playground fight, but the people squirted are usually visitors, and the people holding the plastic guns look pretty upset. Why has it reached the point where people are using toys to tell travelers to leave?

GuestIt does look like a joke at first, but for the people living there, it's anything but funny. This happened during a big protest in July where thousands of people marched through the streets. They were carrying signs that said things like tourists go home and you're not welcome. The water guns were a way to grab headlines and show that they're fed up with how their city is being run. Barcelona has about one and a half million people living there, but they get something like twelve million visitors every single year. It has reached a tipping point where the people who actually live in the city feel like they're being pushed out of their own homes.

HostBut isn't being soaked while you're eating lunch a bit much? I mean, those people probably saved up all year for that trip and they're just trying to enjoy a meal.

GuestThat's the big tension. Most of these travelers aren't doing anything wrong on a personal level. They're just following the maps and eating the food. But the locals see those individual travelers as part of a giant wave that's washing away their way of life. When a city becomes that popular, everything starts to change to serve the guests instead of the neighbors. The little shops that used to sell bread or fix shoes get replaced by places that sell cheap sunglasses and postcards. The quiet streets become loud at all hours. To the locals, a water gun is a very mild way to say that their lives aren't a show for other people to watch.

HostSo it's about more than just some crowded sidewalks and loud music. What's the biggest thing that's actually hurting the people who live there?

GuestIt's the cost of a roof over their head. Over the last ten years, the cost to rent a place in Barcelona has gone up by nearly seventy percent. If you're a young person trying to find your first apartment or a family that has lived in the same spot for decades, you're basically being priced out. A lot of that's because so many apartments have been turned into short term rentals for travelers. Landlords can make way more money renting a room for three nights to a visitor than they can renting it for a year to a local teacher or a nurse. When the neighborhoods are full of lockboxes for keys instead of actual neighbors, the whole feel of the place dies.

HostI can see why that would make people angry, but surely the city needs that money. Doesn't the money from those millions of visitors help the people who live there?

GuestThat's the argument you hear a lot, but the protesters say that money doesn't really reach them. The jobs that tourism creates are often low paying work like cleaning rooms or serving drinks. The big profits go to the people who own the giant hotels or the platforms that list the rental homes. Meanwhile, the price of coffee goes up, the price of a meal goes up, and the bus is always too full to get to work. They feel like they're working in a giant theme park where they can no longer afford the ticket to live.

HostSo what are they actually asking for? Is there a plan to fix this, or is it just going to be water guns from here on out?

GuestThe city leaders are actually starting to listen because the anger is getting so loud. The mayor recently said he wants to pull the plug on all short term rentals by the year twenty twenty eight. That would mean ten thousand apartments would've to stop hosting travelers and go back to being homes for the people of the city. They're also talking about raising the tax that visitors pay and cutting down on the number of giant cruise ships that dock at the port. These ships can drop off thousands of people at once who all crowd into the same few streets for five hours and then leave.

HostIt sounds like a total shift in how they think about the city. It's not just about how many people can we get through the door, but who's the city actually for?

GuestExactly. It's a fight for the soul of the place. People in Barcelona love their city and they take a lot of pride in their culture. They don't want to live in a museum where everything is frozen for a photo. They want to live in a place where you know your neighbor and you can afford to buy groceries on your own street. The water guns are just a loud, wet way of saying that a city has to be a home first and a destination second.

HostThe city is moving to shut down ten thousand short term rentals to try and bring those homes back to the people who work and live there.

GuestBarcelona might finally feel like a neighborhood again instead of just a background for someone else's vacation photos.