The 'Greta of tourism': Meet the 17-year-old behind anti-tourism protests in Spain

ITV News

3 days ago

ITV News Assistant Producer Sasha Kay spoke to the teenager behind some of Europe's most divisive protests
If you've gone on holiday to Spain in the past few years, you have likely seen more than one 'tourist go home' graffiti tag. Some may even have been doused by a water pistol.
On June 15 crowds across Spanish tourist hotspots protested against mass tourism. There was shouting, flares, and the water pistols that have become a symbol of 'tourismphobia'.
As protests in Spain have ramped up, the number of tourists visiting has dropped. New figures from May show a 1.6% decrease in tourists to what has traditionally been a British favourite holiday destination.
Good news for Jaume Pujol, the 17-year-old activist behind the Mallorca protests.
Jaume started protesting at just 13 years old and earned the title 'the Greta Thunberg of tourism". He says mass tourism in Spain is something "young people feel more".
Since his school exams finished this summer, he's been busy organising and promoting huge protests across Mallorca.
He was first inspired to organise anti-tourism protests by "thinking about the future".
"Thinking about the future on our island, about thinking that we can't live here, that we won't be able to work here, or afford a house in the place where we grew up and where our grandparents grew up."
"It's not that I'm against tourism, but rather against the monoculture of tourism or the reliance on one industry because it makes us economically weak as an island.
"When there was a problem like Covid, we couldn't have tourists, and there was a serious crisis."
However, if tourism were to decrease significantly in the way that Jaume suggests, some business owners say they would take a financial bruising and lose their income.
When asked about these claims, Jaume said simply: "It's a complete lie".
"It's super simple to debunk. It is true that tourism generates wealth, but not for everyone in the way it is sold to us. It doesn't generate wealth for me, my mother, or my grandmother.
"Tourism generates wealth for a small portion of the population, which are the business owners and the upper class of Mallorca. Therefore, I would say it's a lie."
The Mallorca Hotel Business Federation has responded to the recent anti-tourism protests by paying for around twenty billboards with welcome messages in English and German.
One reads "Tourist, go home happy" - a play on the "tourist go home" signs around Spanish cities.
The federation claims the anti-tourism movement is a radical minority.
"We're not the minority, they're the minority," responds Jaume. "They're far fewer than us, and they're a selfish minority that's getting rich off our misery, off the exploitation of the working class, and the destruction of our island."
"The campaign has gone down very badly with people here in Mallorca. At least two billboards have been egged."
As school holidays start in the UK, and Brits head abroad, Jaume says tourists need to make an effort to see the issues from the protesters' point of view.
"There are some who complain because we've ruined their vacation, or whatever you want to say.
"I would tell them to put themselves in our shoes and understand the problem we have on our island. Understand that we're not against individual tourists, we're against an entire economy, but that at the end of the day but ultimately they represent that economy."
Despite anti-tourism protests often targeting British tourist favourites like Barcelona, Alcúdia or Palma, Jaume insists his group has nothing against British tourists personally.
"I don't like to differentiate between tourists, not by nationality or by type. Not differentiating between German tourists, English tourists, between poorer tourists and richer tourists.
"We don't even want elite tourism, we don't want sustainable tourism because we believe it doesn't exist. We want a decrease in tourism and we don't differentiate between whether the British behave worse than the Germans."
His message to British tourists in Spain this summer is simple: "A little empathy and a little understanding of the problem we have here and why we fight the way we do.
"Not to think so much about the fact that there's a graffiti or a water pistol, because the attack will never be directed at the individual tourist, but rather the attack will be against an entire economic sector that generates problems on our island."
Jaume, for one, won't be travelling abroad. He says he's not gone away on holiday for a while now, feeling that he needs to be "consistent" with his group's message.
"But," Jaume adds, "just because we have a problem and we complain about it doesn't mean we can't leave Mallorca and that if we do, we're hypocrites."