The political left does not have a political proposal on tourism that we want for the social majority. And within the social left, this debate has not penetrated, which means that the protests against touristification run the risk of losing their acceptance and importance among the popular classes.
On the left, tourism has taken it the wrong way. We are facing a double crisis with enormous consequences and the left lacks a clear proposal on how to deal with it. The growing touristification of cities and territories, accelerated after the global financial crisis of 2008 as a way to guarantee the reproduction of capital, and reactivated after the COVID-19 pandemic, has given rise to growing social unrest.
Multiple socio-economic problems are concentrated on tourism: rising cost of living, and especially housing prices; overcrowding of public spaces; congestion in public transport or loss of the local commercial fabric. And all this in exchange for a job, but extremely precarious, with workers who have to take medication daily to cope with the workload. Therefore, the perception of displacement, expulsion, from places of origin or from the place where one has decided to build one’s life has spread. The concern about the loss of the right to the city is concentrated in tourism.
These social unrests have given rise to a new cycle of protests that began last April in the Canary Islands and have already spread to more than a dozen Spanish cities. The mobilizations have been led by a wide range of social organizations – environmentalists, housing unions, neighborhood groups, groups for the reduction of tourism… –, with varying weights depending on the case. The political left, with greater institutional power and attached to a development model, has not been there. Or, from other political spaces, although it has sympathized with the demonstrations, it has participated with embarrassment, because it is easy to point out the limits of what it did when it had an institutional presence or, depending on the case, to highlight the timidity with which it has faced the problem.
But at the same time, the other aspect of the tourism crisis is that a third of the Spanish population cannot take a holiday – at least a week away from home – and in communities like Andalusia this figure can reach up to half. The figures are similar to the European average. This means that a growing number of people have financial difficulties in being able to take a holiday. And the left is not there either. We do not have clear demands and proposals to develop public social tourism programmes or for the generation of social infrastructure, such as parks or public transport, at the service of leisure and tourism in popular sectors. We have different public initiatives without coordination, isolated in different administrative agencies, without coherence.
The problem is that tourism policies have not been designed to meet the needs of the majority of the population. Much has been done to promote social return measures for the tourist presence in a certain area, but we do not benefit from tourism policies designed to benefit big capital. Programs like Imserso, whose resources come from the Ministry of Health, only generate debate about their budget allocation or who won the competition, but nothing about the quality of care for our elderly, because that is not what matters. The program was designed to benefit the private sector by extending the opening period of hotels. For twenty years, we have abandoned the large social tourism complex that was Perlora, in Asturias, and it seems that only one investor is waiting to buy it and use the land for the construction of luxury residential complexes.
The political left does not have a political proposal on tourism that we want for the social majority. And in the social left, this debate has not penetrated, with which social protests against touristification risk losing acceptance and importance among the popular classes, because the complicity with the unions is very limited and because there is no question of knowing what we want. to gain from tourism for the majority of the population. If we add to this a certain dose of supposed moral virtuosity when talking about tourism, we run the risk of not being able to reach large sections of the popular classes. The desire for holidays and all the potentially positive things that they can bring do not seem to enter the political debate.
Intervening in the double crisis
It is urgent to build a left-wing political intervention program in tourism, capable of facing this double crisis. And this will have to be done both from the institutions, or aspiring to intervene from them, but also from the streets. First of all, we must fight against touristification. Protests and mobilizations must continue and expand, strengthening alliances to broaden their social base. In these countries, we must demand an immediate shock plan to prevent tourism from continuing to grow: close infrastructure expansion projects, such as airports or ports; end international promotion; suspend new macro events; close or reconvert public-private entities dedicated to promoting tourism. And, from there, it will be necessary to propose an intervention program that limits the dynamics of tourist capital, from different areas of intervention: urban planning, fiscal, environmental and labor, among others. All these means of regulation must serve to avoid continuing to sink into a model of tourist specialization that leads to increasing impoverishment and vulnerability. And, in return, we must launch an economic diversification program capable of generating massive jobs. Without a doubt, the application of a program of this nature cannot be sustained without social pressure, with social organizations mobilized within companies, with unions with a socio-political vocation, and from the outside, with environmental struggles, for the right to housing and neighborhood struggles. Without social pressure, the political left has no counterweight that allows it to advance, and even if this leads to contradictions and tensions, it is the necessary path.
At present, facing the dynamics of touristification also means facing a change in strategy underway on the part of the major tourist capitals and public administrations: the trend towards tourist elitization. Faced with the risks arising from a scenario of chronic emergencies – climate change, energy crisis, supply chain interruptions, shortages of foreign minerals, geopolitical tensions – which exacerbate the uncertainty of tourist development, capital seeks refuge in the market of great power. purchase. It is also a way to overcome the growing social tensions linked to massification. This strategy, however, deepens the problem we find ourselves in, because it requires an increase in the expenditure of public resources to face competition between cities for a segment smaller than that of the middle and working classes. Furthermore, the fact that they spend a lot does not mean that the benefits are redistributed fairly, nor that their consumption is not much more damaging to the environment, due to hypermobility and pollution resulting from the use of megayachts, private jets, first-class flights or the disproportionate consumption of water. But it also distances us from the ability to assume the costs of an equitable socio-ecological transition that reduces the weight of tourism and tries to diversify our economy.
The other dimension of the tourism crisis concerns the ability to implement policies and infrastructures that make it easier for the majority to take vacations. On the left, we defend free time, as time freed from work, but not only as a way to recover from exhausting and alienating work, but as a time to develop one’s abilities and to live, a time for desire. And we can organize it without leaving home, in our immediate environment or by traveling, that is when we talk about tourism. The fact is that these ways of disposing of our free time can be carried out in the logic of the reproduction of capital or in a dynamic of emancipation. This is why we must mobilize the public resources that make this possible: social tourism programs adapted to different ages and needs; public infrastructures such as parks or public transport; capacities for managing natural spaces; professional training adapted to a much more demanding local public; the strengthening of associative, union or Social and Solidarity Economy structures to expand the leisure and tourism offer; social infrastructures to serve the reorganization of care. But we must also strengthen the proposals of the Social and Solidarity Economy, unionism and popular self-organization. We will also have to rediscover the Sunday spirit, with leisure and tourism outside the market and the protection of the State. The major limitation of this promotion of tourism among social majorities is that it will have to be organized in geographical proximity, taking into account the biophysical limits of the planet. And if international flights cannot be universal, they will have to be limited and have democratic selection criteria, so that it is not only economic resources that make it possible.
The left must open the debate on tourism and develop its own proposal, which tries to limit capital and, in turn, builds the perspective of a better world that we want to conquer, in which free time from work is an element of desire of a post-capitalist society. A world to be won, in which other tourisms are also present.
