"We spit in your beer" – inside Europe’s grassroots fight against overtourism

For years now, governments and city authorities have introduced measures to control tourism – from regulating cruise ships to clamping down on short-term lets – but now, it seems, locals are taking matters into their own hands.

All across Europe fingers are pressing down on spray-paint nozzles, bogus posters are being plastered onto walls, banners unfurling outside historic buildings, according to The Telegraph.

We spoke to our experts in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Greece, Croatia and Venice to shed light on the grassroots campaigns against overtourism, and how things stepped up a notch in 2023.

Athens

By Heidi Fuller-love

In early December, buildings in Athens used for short-term rental were plastered with posters bearing what seemed to be an official government logo. The message was clear. Evacuate apartments immediately due to a bedbug infestation, or face a €500 fine.

Tourists were surprised: “Greece is the country of filoxenia – love of the stranger – we never thought they could be targeting overseas visitors like this,” said Philippa Unwin, who was staying in one of the apartments in Athens’ Exarcheia district. The area has been home to countless activist groups since the Athens Polytechnic uprising in 1973, when a massive student demonstration against the Greek Military Junta resulted in the death of 24 civilians.

Exarcheia was just one of the areas that was badly affected by Greece’s decade-long recession which saw the economy shrink by almost a quarter. 

“We are the lost generation – if we want to work we have to leave the country. If we stay we face poverty, and even homelessness,” one 25-year-old Athenian confided.

As short-term rentals push up prices in Athens, along with some of Greece’s more popular islands, the hoax has highlighted a growing anger against Airbnbs. This anger is also visible on walls daubed with anti-Airbnb graffiti in Exarcheia and surrounding neighbourhoods: “Dear Tourist, enjoy your Airbnb. Signed a future homeless Athenian,” one of them reads. “Flats for immigrants not for airbnb,” another says.

In 2021 an activist X (formerly Twitter) account named “Exarcheia Tourism #airbnburn” even posted the video of an attack on an Airbnb apartment. 

“If there were better laws to regulate Airbnbs I don’t think people would be so annoyed”, one property owner, who didn’t want to be named for fear of reprisals, told The Telegraph. 

“Greeks are generally peaceful people and I don’t think even the anarchists have something against tourists, but Airbnb pushes out the locals who can’t afford to rent, and little or nothing has been done to stop this.” 

Barcelona

By Sally Davies

With record numbers of tourists swamping Barcelona in 2023, rental prices through the roof, and ever-lengthening queues for public transport, no one can blame the residents of Barcelona for growing a little frustrated. 

City Hall has acknowledged there is a problem, and introduced various measures: raised the nightly tourist tax; put a limit on numbers for tour groups; frozen construction of hotels in the centre and tightened regulations for those hoping to rent their apartments on Airbnb. It’s at street level, however, that the fightback is most evident.

“Tourist go home!” yells the graffiti, all over the Old City. Close to major tourist attractions, it takes on a more despairing note: “Your luxury trip – my daily misery.” The nature of the slogans varies from barrio to barrio. In Gràcia, long famous as a neighbourhood of cheerful anarchists, you’ll find: “We spit in your beer. Cheers!” and “Tourists go home, pickpockets welcome.”

Other Barcelonins recognise the economic need for tourism, or see this stance as hypocritical.

“Those who painted this have been to New York, Berlin, London, Lisbon, Tangier, Istanbul…” reads one sign in response, “but they don’t want anyone coming to this neighbourhood. Hypocrisy is the worst way to fight against gentrification.”

There is also widespread disapproval of the printed, official-looking posters encouraging “balconing” – jumping from one balcony to another, mostly practised by young, drunk Brits and Germans in holiday resorts – given the number of tragic accidents over the years. 

It’s hard to argue with the disgruntled residents of Vallcarca, however, for rotating the signs to Gaudí’s Park Güell to send visitors in the wrong direction and give themselves a little peace, or the entrepreneurial owner of picturesque gourmet grocery Colmado Múrria, exasperated by the Instagrammers leaving without buying anything. 

“Visit just looking,” reads a sign in the window: “€5 per person”.

Croatia

By Jane Foster

Here in Split, while exploring the paved alleys within the Roman walls of Diocletian’s Palace, visitors might be surprised to see big red-and-white notices, similar to prohibitory road signs, warning of punishment for antisocial behaviour. 

Using (rather amusing) illustrations to make their messages accessible to all nationalities and the illiterate, they warn that you’ll be paying out €300 for: urinating or defecating in public spaces; climbing on monuments; jumping in fountains; or sleeping in parks, squares, and other public areas. Vomiting in public spaces will set you back €150.

Split city council realised they needed to take action after a surge in rowdiness in summer 2023. The culprits were mainly raucous groups of Britons and Australians in their late-teens and early-20s, who had been on pub crawls. Locals (and well-behaved visitors) were becoming distraught over the late-night noise, trash and stench in the Unesco-listed old town. The city also employed a private security firm, Pit Bull, to patrol the streets from 10pm to 4am.

In reality, it’s not so much the tourists that bother locals, but the way tourism is changing the way people live. Split’s old town is practically empty in winter as residents have sold up and moved to the suburbs, homes have been turned into holiday lets, public spaces have been eroded and much-loved trees have been felled.

In August, Split’s Salon Galić staged Summer Album, an exhibition of paintings by Maja Rožman - cynical depictions of inflatable pink flamingos, plastic flip flops and gaudy cocktails, highlighting today’s “Instagramisation” of summer. This resistance to tourism by artists and musicians, employing irony and humour, is nothing new. Years back, Franci Blašković (frontman of Istrian band Gori Ussi Winnetou), founded the jocular League for Combatting Tourism. And in Bol on Brač, multimedia artist Ivica Jakšić Čokrić Puko has staged performances and made short films about Bol’s gorgeous Zlatni rat beach, illustrating its exploitation by mass tourism.

Venice

By Anne Hanley

“Tourists go home.” “Venice isn’t Disneyland.” On a first, captivating visit to this fairy-tale city, few tourists will notice – never mind be offended by – the ubiquitous graffiti scrawled across its picturesque palazzi. If there is to be a rude awakening, it will probably come in the form of a staggering bill for a sit-down gelato and coffee, or an eye-wateringly expensive gondola ride.

Venetians walk a tightrope between objecting to the overtourism which makes normal life in the city a nightmare, and the knowledge that the income from those same tourists keep the city afloat. Alongside the anti-tourist jibes are just as many aimed at fellow citizens renting out accommodation through major booking platforms, making it almost impossible for locals to find affordable dwellings.

Prices aside, visitors are more likely to encounter indifference than open hostility in the lagoon city. Your experience of Venice depends largely on how well you understand its quirks. Stand at the bar for your aperitivo and cicchetti (savoury nibbles) and you’ll spend half as much as the tourists waiting for table service. Nip down the right alley and you’ll find the bars, restaurants and shops that cater to locals rather than selling overpriced tourist tack. 

Visitors are not made to feel unwelcome if they happen to stumble into this parallel city, but Venetians are understandably keen to guard some of their secrets, to carve out small corners where they can breathe easy and drink an affordable spritz away from the chaos of the main tourist haunts. 

There are, of course, times when frustration bubbles to the surface: decades of furious demonstrations against cruise ships in the lagoon are a case in point. But there are many others when Venetians show themselves to be patient, or at the very least resigned, in the face of abject visitor stupidity. Take, for example, the recent case of the gondolier who personally dragged his passengers out of a canal to safety, after his instructions to sit down or risk capsizing the boat went unheeded in the face of the perfect selfie opportunity.

Amsterdam

By Callum Booth

Amsterdam’s government is known for its hostile stance towards tourists, and while the city’s residents are generally a tolerant bunch, there’s a growing number exasperated by the number of visitors.

One example of a local-organised movement against tourists is “Stop de Gekte” (meaning “Stop the madness”). This is a grassroots organisation that operates primarily in De Wallen, the centre of Amsterdam.

On weekends, some members form a “red light district guard” and patrol the area. They don’t get directly involved in the chaos, mind, instead they document the debauchery and bad behaviour.

This invariably leads to certain videos or photos going viral – and, with that, large amounts of press coverage and public pressure on the government to enact change.

A representative from the group, who preferred to remain nameless, tells me the issue they see with tourism isn’t just that it makes the area “busier than ever,” but it enables a constant amount of depravity.

“It’s bizarre to see even young couples with their children [staring] at the poor girls in the windows [of the red light district],” they tell me. “Prostitution has unfortunately become a tourist attraction.”

Stop de Gekte isn’t the only grassroots reaction to overtourism Amsterdam is witnessing. In the latter half of 2023, visitors and locals alike were met with a selection of official-looking posters across the city that proclaimed crack and heroin legal in certain areas.

While this turned out to be the work of an art collective protesting The Netherlands’ drug laws, the posters’ similarity to the notices in the red light district warning tourists to not smoke marijuana or drink alcohol were clearly deliberate. Much like Stop de Gekte’s evidence of the red light district’s depravity, this poster campaign aimed to unsettle locals, and visitors alike.