World News

38978 readers

2630 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

144

Barcelona is parched — and angry at quenched tourists (www.politico.eu)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The yawning gap between locals’ and visitors’ consumption is stoking long-standing resentments ahead of an election.

As rain poured into Catalonia’s parched capital, the tourists did, too.

Yet while a damp April brought some relief to the drought-stricken Spanish region — which has been living under rain-starved skies for over three years — the crescendoing tourist season did not.

After all, spring is when visitors start spilling into Barcelona’s streets each morning from cruise ships, hotels and Airbnbs — and consuming considerably more of the city’s water than the average resident, threatening to push Barcelona’s water supply to the breaking point.

The disconnect has locals fulminating. While Catalan municipalities have faced water consumption limits since the region declared a drought emergency in early February, the tourism sector has largely escaped restrictions.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It took like 10-15 years to go from anyone can afford a flat to almost nobody can.

It's as if nothing could be done about it. One country blames tourists, others immigrants. In Netherlands the most popular party said for ages that it's useless to plan ahead. Such remarks are ignored. People go for the populist remarks. Blame some group of people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I don't think you're envisioning physics in many of these situations. Might not be the case in Barcelona which is pretty big and growable but let me give you another example to point out why that generalization doesn't stick. I'm from nearby Sesimbra, a 5k pop village in a very very cool-looking place.

If I had to bet, Sesimbra receives like 50k tourists a month, many of which want to stay in hotels and tents and illegal caravans. If one expands Sesimbra, the beauty of the place gets destroyed for everyone. If one does not, the fisherman (yes, it is a fishing village) are now competing with 50k other fellas for land, in a village that can't sustain any other industry.

Even if you tax the hell of tourists and only a fifth keeps going, that is already too many. It literally is destroying both the nature and the livelihood of people that were there for centuries.

I get the idea that people want to see fancy places and we don't have that many Sesimbras in the world, but this massification is basically forbidding people from living anywhere that happens to be pretty and has a good weather. The richer tourists stay in the hotels (which lay on top of bulldozed homes) and the locals are now 20km away because physics couldn't care less. 50k ain't gonna stay in that tiny valley, people do not fit.

We have huge chunks of the coastal dunes destroyed (and those take a long time to recover) because of such misuse and overuse. Everyone wants to go to the beach and everyone wants to have resorts or whatever, and yet the places and the populations are taking very hard beatings. No amount of policy making solves some of those situations given that you can't just have quotas of people allowed to visit a city within the EU. The entire region of Algarve is a disaster.

And yes, there are airports with tourist taxes, but Portugal doesn't have all that many airports. These villages (Sesimbra, Sintra, Ericeira...) are serviced by the same airport as Lisbon. Can't hit tourists with a tax without hitting businesses and others.