In the eighties, a
bumper-sticker plastered on the back of a number of vehicles in the USA’s most
intriguing state would read ‘Welcome to California, Now Go Home’. Behind the
wheel of the old rust-bucket bought from a dealer in Detroit (where else?), I felt a bit of an interloper driving around The Golden State with my travellers
cheques, my snappy British accent and my half-empty jar of Ovaltine.
Tourism may not have been such
a Big Thing in California, despite the popular song from Supertramp (here ya go) and the steady arrival of farmers from the Dust Belt
looking for a decent job; but, at 12% of GDP (here), it’s certainly a Big Thing in Spain. Last year, around twice
as many foreign tourists visited this country as there are Spaniards living
here. And, if that was not enough – two people in lederhosen, or perhaps sticky ‘Gibraltar is British’ tee-shirts –
for every Spaniard, you can add the huge numbers of displaced Spaniards themselves
– everyone has a right to a vacación –
flocking to the same destinations.
Those resorts will have put
up the flags, organised a fiesta and will be ready for the onslaught. Shops full
of glitter, bars with cold beer and restaurants with fresh fish. The late night
joints will be buzzing and the cops will be on every corner, nervously fingering
their books of fines. A loud midnight buzz of people, fun, parties, botellones, noise, fire-crackers,
sirens, arguments, screams, music, songs and the burble and bang from those
irritating Harley Davidsons... The following morning, there’s the rubbish to
clean up.
Money is made, vast amounts
of money for the shop-keepers, the apartment owners, the barkeeps, the
municipality itself – but that’s no consolation for the normal folk, those who
live there year round, working in ordinary jobs or retired, who must somehow
get through their day: past the jams, the queues, the noise and the dust.
The town fiesta: costumes and
spectacle, paid with our taxes, is so full of visitors, that there’s no
parking, no room, no welcome for the locals, who with resignation, decide to stay
home. ‘We’ll go next year’ they say.
The apartment block: with
half of the flats rented out, a two-bed apartment with twelve people staying
there, filling the pool for a late-night dip, uprooting the flower bed and
being sick in the lift.
So now we have a new word: la turismofobia. And we read the
headlines, particularly about Barcelona and Madrid, Granada and Palma, where
the cities are taken over by the tourist hoards. This is a fabulous country and
there are few better places to live; but on the car, there’s a new sticker. It reads:
‘Welcome to Spain. Now Go Home’.
