Furious crowds protest sky-high housing and mass tourism in major city

Growing tensions between tourists and locals hit a boiling point in Spain recently as hundreds of thousands of residents flooded the streets of Barcelona, Madrid and other Spanish cities to protest skyrocketing housing costs.

A housing affordability crisis is at the center of the unrest, fueled in part by short-term vacation rentals — an issue that Barcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni has publicly addressed.

Residents are arguing mass tourism has priced them out, with real estate companies converting apartments into lucrative vacation stays. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez addressed the issue recently at an event in Barcelona.

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“Finding an apartment in Barcelona definitely gave me a better understanding of how competitive the housing market can be,” travel writer Jordi Lippe-McGraw, who moved to Barcelona from New York City six weeks ago, told Fox News Digital.

“It’s a city where so many people want to live. There’s a lot of pressure on available housing.”

Barcelona and the surrounding region welcomed a total of 26.1 million visitors in 2025, which generated an estimated $15.4 billion in direct tourism spending, according to the Barcelona Tourism Observatory.

Frustrated locals have protested loudly and defiantly.

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Amid the pressure, the federal and local governments are trying to implement change.

“Barcelona began rethinking tourism … back in 2017,” the commissioner for sustainable tourism, José Antonio Donaire, told The New York Times this summer.

“But the message of the city now is: Not one tourist more,” he said.

In September, the forced eviction of María del Carmen Abascal, an 87-year-old Spanish pensioner, became a symbol of the affordability crisis, as Fox News Digital reported earlier.

After she died on Oct. 7, thousands took to the streets in Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Málaga and other cities.

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Short-term vacation rentals are part of the dispute.

On April 1, Barcelona combined a flat $5.60 (€5.00) city surcharge with the regional Catalan tourist tax, creating one of the highest visitor taxes in Europe, according to the Barcelona City Council.

That raised the total overnight tax for hotel guests to between $7.84 (€7.00) and $13.44 (€12.00) per person, per night, according to the Catalan Tax Agency.

In September 2026, Barcelona also finalized plans to restrict short-stay cruise tourism.

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The Barcelona City Council initially approved raising the municipal tourist tax surcharge for short-stay cruise visitors to the legal maximum of $27 per day, according to the official city council portal.

Lippe-McGraw said the crowds are palpable in tourist areas, but the neighborhood where she lives is largely shielded from protests.

“We were aware of this sort of anti-tourist sentiment before arriving, which definitely weighed on our minds,” she said. 

“Some of Barcelona’s most popular areas — like the Gothic Quarter, Las Ramblas, the Sagrada Familia — can be incredibly crowded even on a random Tuesday afternoon,” she added. 

“I can understand how frustrating that must be if you’re a resident who’s simply trying to get to work, running errands or going about your day,” she added.

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Lippe-McGraw has traveled across all seven continents and said mass tourism has hit many major cities, in her experience.

“How do you decide who is allowed to come and see Venice or see Barcelona versus who is not?” she asked.

Yet locals have been very welcoming to her family, she said.

“Everybody has been welcoming us, even in day-to-day interactions at the store, at the pharmacy, dealing with a plumber,” she said.

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“We are trying to make an effort to speak Spanish, learn the cultural norms. … And I think making an effort to understand the culture, learn the language and being respectful of local customs goes a long way.” 

Brittany Miller and Ashley J. DiMella of Fox News Digital, as well as Teresa Mull, contributed reporting.