*with the number of foreign tourists...

There is a difference between tourists visiting and too many tourists visiting.

How many people don't give a fuck tho?

Suck my cock stupid bot

I used to live in NYC. Anytime someone complained about tourism, I always wonder why they even live in NYC.

I'm sorry, but this is completely backwards with regards to the situation in Spain or many other poorer european countries. I'm much more familiar with the situation in Croatia, but this applies to most of southern Europe (including Spain).

Yes, the countries take in a sizable portion of their gdp from tourism, however this is generally at the expense of the average citizen. Tourism is notoriously bad at distributing any wealth it provides, while the average person living in these places gets all of the negative side effects. Tourists are generally coming from richer countries (USA, Germany, UK etc) and able to/used to paying much higher prices. So the local economy shifts to focusing exclusively on tourists (it's where the money is) and locals get all of the negative externalities (inflated rents, inflated prices, crowding, poorly behaved tourists) with very little benefit.

Local and national governments focus exclusively on further investments in tourism (since it's such an 'important' part of the economy!) at the expense of other investments (education, non-tourist infrastructure) which would be more beneficial to the overall population.

Not to mention, compared to just about anywhere else in the world, the number of tourists in Europe is absolutely overwhelming compared to locals. Croatia is a country of under 4 million people, but gets over 20 million visitors a year! The average salary is somewhere around $1000 A MONTH, so it's no surprise that so much of the country is instead focused on the needs of tourists who can easily spend $1000 a week...

This isn't the same situation as a tourism hotspot in the US, for instance (where I'm originally from). Yes, wages vary geographically in the US, but not nearly to the same extent. The areas often grew around tourism rather than being a normal functional city where families have been living for centuries before very recently turning into what is essentially a theme park which is largely unaccessible to natives.

It doesn't have anything to do with living with different cultures, we just want to be able to pay rent

Imagine your town/city starts completely catering to people from richer countries coming there to get completely wasted and intentionally act crazy... that's what happened to a huge portion of Spain.

Tourists are not culture. They're a zombie plague.

I promise you, if you move there, learn Spanish and start working for a local company, you'll learn that people there are extremely welcoming to foreigners.

But if all you want is an Instagram shot in the same spot as the other 16 million people who visited just this year a city of 1.6m, and an "authentic" paella (you won't get an authentic one, trust me, but you'll be told it is and you'll keep bragging about it to your colleagues once you return from your vacay, even though the thing you tried tastes nothing like what a paella should taste, digression end), then you bring a negative cultural value. You're an annoyance, and a one that's not worth whatever financial benefit it brings.

One could also argue that most of your financial contribution goes to making hotels and landlords richer, and nobody really needs that.

So, I'm with people of Barcelona who paint "fuck you tourists" on their walls.