“What do local people think about tourists and tourism?” an English tourist asked me just last week.

I was thinking ahead. Was she connecting the anti-tourism demonstrations that have gripped Mallorca and Barcelona recently? And those that we have already seen in Venice?

“Why do you ask?” I questioned diplomatically. “Oh, well it was just that we had noticed in shops and restaurants that staff weren’t very friendly, in fact you could see that had had enough of their jobs and didn’t want to be there serving,” she answered.

Ah, so it wasn’t that she was worried about getting squirted with water pistols as tourists have been seeing in Barcelona.

“I would say it is a love/hate relationship,” I smiled. Adding that “tourism generally gives with one hand and takes away with the other.” Which is basically the root of the protests in Spain.

I spoke to a friend who lives in Palma, the capital of Mallorca, and he told me that “people aren’t necessarily against tourism, what they are against is two things – the fact that Airbnb apartments have made the real estate impossible for local people, and secondly that the real wealth from tourism is earned by companies outside of Spain.” Hmmm, that all sounds rather familiar.

Do I think we’ll see the same protests here in Dubrovnik? No, not a chance. Why? Well, experience tells me that that kind of civil mobilisation is highly unlikely.

“I’m sure that working in this heat isn’t fun, but a smile costs nothing,” the English lady added. I understood her. I have been the victim of an over-worked and under-paid waiter and shop assistant many a time. You see it so often that when someone does smile or have a friendly nature that they really stick out from the crowd. Is that the way it is supposed to be? Absolutely not! I guess I have become immune to bad manners.

And then a few days later I found myself in another situation where I was surrounded by curious tourists. And again testing questions.

“Is there an “us and them” state in Dubrovnik?” asked an Irish tourist.

I had presumed (wrongly) that he was describing the differences between locals and tourists, in fact he was talking about the condition where the wealth from tourism is concentrated into only a few pockets, I guess kind of creating a medieval-style feudal system.

Now, there are some arguments to suggest that we are indeed turning the clock back to a period of the haves and the have nots. I would indeed say that in almost three decades of living here the gap between people's financial wealth, or so called wealth disparity, has never been so wide.

And as history has so many times proven, a feudal system is brought down when the peasants revolt, or rather the people revolt. “Qu'ils mangent de la brioche,” or “Let them eat cake,” from a French Princess proceeded Louis XVI losing his head by guillotine after the French revolution. In a nutshell this is what is happening in the Spanish tourism industry, of course without cakes or guillotines.

Barcelona’s mayor isn’t holding back.

He has identified cruise tourism and short-term rentals as the main problems, Hmmm, sounds familiar. So he plans to raise tourist tax for anyone staying less than 12 hours, essentially cruise ship passengers, and scrap the licences of over 10,000 apartments currently approved as short-term rentals.

Whilst these moves will probably raise the overall standard of living for locals in the tourist season they don’t really address the problems of wealth concentration. And on the flip side they could lead to a nail in the coffin for Barcelona’s tourism industry.

The line between success and failure is fine, the line between a smile and a frown is even finer. 

Read more Englishman in Dubrovnik…well, if you really want to

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About the author
Mark Thomas (aka Englez u Dubrovniku) is the editor of The Dubrovnik Times. He was born and educated in the UK and moved to live in Dubrovnik in 1998. He works across a whole range of media, from a daily radio show to TV and in print. Thomas is fluent in Croatian and this column is available in Croatia on the website – Dubrovnik Vjesnik