Cataluña has been in the Spanish headlines for a while, thanks to the independence movement and the proposed illegal referendum in October, but now it’s something else.

The radical, left-wing youth movement, Arran, is attacking tourism in Barcelona and on the Balearic Islands. These attacks are either against tourist buses, for example, or restaurants and other establishments that are popular with tourists.

This situation requires an in depth analysis. What’s going so wrong in Barcelona that somebody, whatever their political ilk, wants to kill the goose that lays the golden egg?

You really have to take into account the politics in this autonomous region of Spain, as well as Spain’s problem of ‘tourism at all costs.’ Tourism is the prime industry; the central pillar of the country’s economy,  going right back to the 60’s in Franco’s time.

The British are by far the largest national figure in the tourism stats, leaving the rest of the Europeans far behind, but how is ‘Spain’ sold in the UK? Cheap booze, sex and screw you, basically, and the last of the three has nothing to do with the second.

At the moment the Catalan Region is governed by a right-wing separatist party who have formed a coalition government with an extreme, left-wing, anti-system, minority party in order to have a workable majority. The result is madness – the main party has the tiger by its tail and is hanging on for its life.

There is going to be an illegal referendum on the 1st of October, which even if it fails to materialise, will cause seismic shocks throughout Spain.

Which brings us to tourism in Spain. This country receives more visitors each year than the actual figure for the Spanish population – that’s a huge influx, which is disproportional both in distribution as well as time periods. If you fit in that number of visitors equally throughout the country and at the same time throughout the year, then there wouldn’t be a problem, but the vast majority of foreign tourists head for Barcleona and the Balearic Islands – Málaga absorbs a lot but is not in the same division.

So, where there is a buck to be made, then you can bet no stone will be left un-turned in order to make one. In the case of the city of Barcelona, it is virtually impossible for a person from Barcelona to find somewhere to live because just about every flat is being rented out to tourists at astronomic prices.

The same goes for Mallorca and the rest of the Balearic Islands. There are plenty of jobs in Mallorca, but nowhere for workers to stay, unless they want to hand over 80% of their salaries to a landlord. It reminds me of London in the 80’s, by the way.

The Spanish islands, tourist attractions are nearing exhaustion as far as natural resources go (read, water) because the tourist trade is so voracious in its demands, so the island authorities are seriously considering limiting the tourist influx. Readers might also remember that there was already a moratorium on hotel construction on the islands about ten years back for precisely the same reasons.

So let’s return to the type of tourism that is arriving. There are travel agents in the UK that specialise in selling booze-fuelled holidays in Barcelona, Valencia and Mallorca. Cheap holiday packages aimed at the young to basically do what they cannot do back home; primarily because such sprees are too expensive, topped with early closing hours, and, of course, the what-happens-in-Spain-doesn’t-count attitude.

Magaluff (Valencia) for example can be summed up with urine and vomit stained streets, drunken brawls and half naked drunks roaming the streets… and that’s just the girls.

Locals are complaining to the town halls who have to balance the tourist sector’s needs; i.e., a blind eye, and what the taxpaying residents want – the latter normally dips out on this when it comes to deciding.

So, along comes the loony-left, anti-system, Arran who start attacking tourists establishments, by painting tourists buses and letting off flares in restaurants and even puncturing the tyres on bicycles for rent. They don’t tackle the herds of truculent, pint-and-a-punch-up tourists, because they’re ardent militants, but not suicidal; they target just normal tourists trying to enjoy a meal in a restaurant, for example.

Does the Catalan Government condemn this, even though it is hurting the tax coffers? No, of course they don’t, because they need the CUP coalition partners.

Is there any way out of this? Nope, not the way that the present Central Government in Madrid is going because they are hell bent upon turning Spain into a wage-poverty, work market spewing out waiters and hotel-room cleaners on a minimum salary who work 12 hours a day, seven days a week for less than 800 euros a month, with a contract that is only valid for x-amount of weeks.

Money for education, Scientific and Industrial investigation, etc, has gone to join the dinosaurs and anybody who does have a decent education has left the country in search of work.

When a resident of a city, somebody who was born there, cannot afford to pay the rent, even for a hovel, then something has to give.

When you can’t take your kid out to the park without wearing wellingtons because of the puddles of vomit and zombified drunken foreigners with their underwear on their heads staggering into you, you are not happy, indeed.

That is what is happening.

(News: Spain)