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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Pat Kenny Show. With Timber Living Log Cabins. Saturday and Sunday from 10am. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts. An anti-tourist protest planned for next month aims to bring the holiday island of Mallorca to a halt here to explain the root of the issue and how it could affect your holiday travel correspondent with the London Independent, Simon Calder.
Simon, always lovely to speak to you. So this big protest is planned for 7pm on July 26th, but we're already seeing smaller sort of protests in the run-up to this big event. Can you tell me about those?
Yes, I certainly can. And first of all, I'm so sorry about the connection problems.
Chapter 2: What are the reasons behind the anti-tourist protests in Majorca?
I'm speaking to you from Newcastle upon Tyne. I thought I had a very good signal, but there we are. I'm out in the open and I will carry on as much as I can. Yes, I actually carbon date. The first time I saw anti-tourism protests in the island of Mallorca was actually going back to 2015 when somebody was going around with graffiti saying tourism equals education. terrorism.
We've had many, many other small-scale protests, including, for example, quite an entertaining kind of social media thing, or at least it entertained quite a lot of people on social media, where they went around putting
fake signs up saying you know warning of jellyfish and and things like that on popular beaches so that has now um grown into what we are told is going to be a really important um uh collapsing of of Mallorca on the 26th of July.
And yeah, if you are planning to go out to the island, as I am intending to do this very Wednesday, obviously people are a little bit concerned about what they will find there.
Yeah, I'm reading about messages saying stop tourism SOS that have been painted onto the tarmac on the roads between some of the really popular towns, Day and Solaire.
The idea is these are being plastered on the, for instance, on the roads between Day and Solaire. These are beautiful villages, towns really, where they are very popular with day trippers and indeed cyclists who regard Solaire
mallorca is possibly the greatest place in europe to uh to cycle and the idea is yep they can't cope with any more tourists and the island has become a theme park and they cannot and this is the crucial thing i think they cannot obtain decent housing now i believe that that is actually getting to the nub of these protests both in Spain and other countries as well.
And that is that an awful lot of places which previously would have been the preserve of local people, apartments, for instance, in the city of Palma, the capital, are now Airbnb and similar locations. So basically people who were renting apartments now realize that they can actually make more money by selling to tourists.
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Chapter 3: How have smaller protests led up to the main event in Majorca?
And that has unbalanced everything.
Yeah, and it's interesting to read part of the protest is actually involving some of the lockboxes, which so many of us who've used Airbnb will be familiar with, that the protesters or some individuals are actually gluing shut these lockboxes. So if you arrive at this accommodation, you won't be able to access your keys.
Other than that particular incident or incidents, are tourists or should tourist assignments be fearful of any real direct backlash? if they find themselves in New York and particularly in Palma over the next couple of weeks and months.
I don't think so. I mean, we've seen examples, for instance, was it last summer in Barcelona, there were tourists being pelted with water pistols. And, you know, while they were just sitting in a lovely square having lunch. So, I mean, that's on the scale of unpleasant things to happen. That's fairly low down, but it's obviously disconcerting. I have...
Unbelievably, perhaps in Dublin, also seen anti-tourism slogans painted in various locations. And of course, Dublin, for the vast majority of tourists, is a very welcoming place. And crucially, of course, Mallorca, the other Balearic Islands, the Canaries, are doing really very well financially because of our desire to go from...
colder northern Europe to lovely sunny islands and enjoy everything, the cuisine, the culture, the countryside and more particularly the beaches.
The protests that we have seen in Barcelona or Ibiza or again in Mallorca, Have they had any impact? Are we seeing any change in tourist behaviour? Are we seeing any moves by the authorities to limit the number of Airbnbs or to stop foreigners from coming in and buying whatever available houses are there in the region and using them as holiday homes?
Sure, yes. And I mean, a good place to look for how to apply remedies is actually New York City. Manhattan doesn't really have any Airbnbs because the city outlawed them. And actually, I think New York has a big accommodation problem anyway, which is why an awful lot of football fans are fed up with paying three, four, five hundred dollars a night during the World Cup.
But it's a remedy that is within the hands of local people, local government. Yes, say we will not accept any Airbnb, which is not kind of going back to the original slightly hippie-ish idea, which is whereby you have a... a spare room and you let it out to somebody for maybe 50 euro a night, which is absolutely fine. That's not going to do anybody out of their home.
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