UK tourists are “forbidden” from holidaying in three destinations in Spain in 2015. The European Union has been swamped by overtourism demonstrations and protests in recent weeks and months – and the unrest looks set to continue into 2025.
Fodors has released its ‘Do Not Travel’ list for 2025, including Barcelona, on the Spanish mainland, as well as Majorca, in the Balearic Islands, and the WHOLE of the Canaries (Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote).
It warned the Spanish locations were a victim of their own popularity, being unable to cope with the sheer number of tourists, warning that visiting such busy places “rarely results in happy travellers”. The guide said: “Touring cities full of tourists is frustrating.
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“Sightseeing in villages where locals resent your presence is disturbing and wandering through nature plagued by garbage is depressing.” It’s a sentiment echoed by Peter DeBrine, Unesco’s senior project officer for sustainable tourism.
“What we’re seeing is that we’re breaching a threshold of tolerance in these destinations,” he said. “It’s really trying to rebalance the situation. It’s totally out of balance now.” It comes after protests broke out across the destinations in May, June, July and August of last year.
“I think that added a lot of anxiety and frustration for people who are living in these destinations,” said DeBrine. He was speaking out after protesters urged Brits to “go home” at beaches across the Balearic Islands and Canary Islands.
“I think in certain destinations, certainly there is also the way that tourists behave,” he said to the Guardian newspaper. “I think that also adds to it – you know, the tourists that aren’t respecting those destinations where they’re travelling.”
“I mean, we have also evolved into what I call a selfie-motivated tourism,” he said. “You know, they just want to take a photo of something without really any understanding of what it is and what it means to our past and future.”
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