“Your Holidays, My Misery”
Presumably, if you were a nobleman in 17th-century Western Europe, you would want to test your instincts and experience the adventure of the south for educational reasons (sic). If, on the other hand, you were wealthy in the 19th century, you would probably take part in Thomas Cook’s (Thomas Cook was a 19th-century British pioneer of mass tourism, organizing the first affordable package tours across Europe) organised group excursions. And if we are talking about more recent years, after the Second World War you would have experienced the explosive growth of seaside tourism in the Mediterranean. Tourism has always been associated with the promise of escape and enjoyment. However, the transition from “travel as a privilege” to “travel as a right” gradually led to mass tourism, a globalised experience that today not only transforms local economies but also reshapes the very social and urban fabric of host cities (8).
British Gentlemen on a Grand Tour in Rome circa 1750 © incamerastock and Alamy Stock Photo.
In June 2025, thousands of residents in Barcelona, Majorca, Lisbon, Venice and other Mediterranean cities took to the streets to protest against the impact of overtourism on their lives: skyrocketing rents, loss of public space, disappearance of local businesses. With slogans such as ‘Your holiday, my misery,’ residents gave voice to a rage that had been simmering for years — a reaction not just to tourists, but mainly to a deregulated model of tourism that has excluded them from their own cities (2); (1); (4).
