“So are you going to the Zombie protest on Saturday?” a friend asked last week.
Wait, what? The political landscape isn’t chaotic enough — now the zombies are staging an uprising? What do they want? Shorter living-death curses? More human brains to feast on?
But then I saw the poster. The headline “Tanto Turismo Da Miedo” means “This Much Tourism Is Scary.” It suggested we all show up dressed as zombies, dragging a suitcase, to protest the over-tourism that’s threatening to suck the soul out of Seville and turn it into a theme park.
I was all in.
Like most European cities, Seville is increasingly jammed with holidaymakers who sometimes (gasp!) fail to act with appropriate courtesy and decorum in public. I Googled “Seville Tourist Scandal” to catch up on the latest.
Top result: “Tourists Spark Outrage Over Fountain Dance.” Eleven inebriated foreigners were filmed in broad daylight, singing and dancing in a fountain in the heart of Seville’s old quarter. These disrespectful shenanigans had the neighbors howling for (metaphorical) blood.
And here I must confess my own conscience isn’t entirely clear. On a sweltering night nearly 20 years ago, Rich and I were sitting on the edge of a big stone fountain near our Seville apartment. We began dabbling our feet in the cool water, and pretty soon we were wading, then waltzing in the fountain.
An old Sevillano passing by growled, “Hey you two, is that any way to behave? You wouldn’t do that back where you come from.” At the time I thought cheerfully, “Yes, and that’s the whole point. Living overseas, you get to try things you’d never do back home.” I joked about the incident for years and eventually used it as the title of my book about moving to Seville.
Seville is my Home 2.0; I’m always aware I’m a guest here, and I make an effort to behave myself and not lead others astray. Staring at my computer screen, watching drunken tourists cavort in a fountain, I wondered, aghast, if I’d played any part in inspiring this madness. Then I came to my senses. Yes, thousands of readers have bought my book Dancing in the Fountain (and I’m grateful to each and every one of you!). But the real issue isn’t fountain dancing, it’s the millions of party animals now flooding Seville every year. They’re here kicking up their heels because city officials have spent millions of euros promoting Seville as a sun-drenched, sangria-soaked, anything-goes vacation paradise.
Seville is justly proud of its rich cultural heritage and isn’t above using it for self-promotion because it needs the money. Tourism is financing long-overdue renovations everywhere I look. Crews are busy refurbishing ancient buildings, historic parks, and the little plaza where Rich and I danced in the fountain all those years ago.
Happy as we all are to see crumbling parts of the landscape revitalized, the influx of cash is driving up prices in every sector of the economy, especially food and housing.
Last year Rich and I dined at a posh new place and spent just under 100€ for a meal that was basically two tapas, two glasses of wine, and tap water for which we were charged a shocking (and illegal) three euros apiece. Luckily, if you know where to go, you can still find true bargains. At a recent lunch outside the city center, we paid 11.20€ for approximately the same amount of food and drink, minus the fawning attention, lavish atmosphere, and exquisite arrangement of each mouthful on the plate.
Savvy residents can avoid overpriced meals easily enough, but they can’t stomach the new housing prices, which in just ten years have shot up 70% to 95% (depending on how you crunch the numbers).
“What’s soul-crushing for me,” said my friend Heidi, an American who has lived in Seville for 20 years, “is seeing the mom and pop stores shutting down. You lose the actual services that people who live here need, like a shoe repair store, a key duplication store, the fruit store, the butcher, the fishmonger. They’re all going away, and you’re getting souvenir shops and luggage storage. And that’s hard to see.”
“The small, individually owned shops are disappearing, but that’s a trend that is happening everywhere. It’s happening in the US, too,” pointed out her husband Enrique, a Sevillano entrepreneur whose family owns some short-term rental apartments. “Tourism brings economic growth. It brings gentrification.”
“I remember having a conversation with a former mayor of the city,” Enrique added, “and him specifically saying that they were watching very closely what happened to Barcelona, because they did not want Seville to become another Barcelona. Barcelona is an example where that battle is lost. It is Disneyland for tourists. So it most certainly can kill a city.”
“How can we keep that from happening here?” I asked.
“We keep blaming it on the tourists,” he said. “At some point the local government has to take responsibility. Look, it is your house. You set up the rules in your house. You wouldn’t let someone come and start peeing in the kitchen. You will kick them out of house. So why do you let it happen here with people like our visitors?”
This seemed like the right time to mention the rowdy tourists dancing in the fountain. Enrique (who knows all about my book) grinned. “One or two people doing it in the middle of the night is cute. When you have a horde of people disrupting the whole area, then it’s no longer cute.” I thanked him for letting me off the hook so graciously.
“What it comes down to is this,” said Heidi. “Why do tourists want to come here? Because of the culture, because of the food, because of the people. The soul of the city is the residents.”
To keep the city livable for residents, Heidi and Enrique both agreed that tighter regulations are needed. While laws now control the number of tourist rentals that can be added to existing apartment buildings in the most overrun sections, they leave room for big money to buy whole buildings and turn them into tourist housing, and for thousands more individual units to be licensed in less central areas.
And that’s what had the zombies (and me) taking to the streets on Saturday.
The costumes were marvelous, the signs clever, the mood cheerful but determined. Rich and I were honored to stand in solidarity with the zombie horde.
And for those of you who are considering a visit to Seville this year, I won’t say don’t come, but I will suggest you broaden your itinerary to include other, less publicized towns that aren’t currently on the endangered list. Wherever you go, try to refrain from peeing in inappropriate places, dancing in the fountain (at least in broad daylight in front of eyewitnesses with cameras), and otherwise disturbing the peace and scandalizing the locals. Let’s act as ambassadors of goodwill for our country. Heaven knows our reputation needs all the help it can get these days.
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