The financialisation of the real-estate sector, and of housing in particular, has undergone a remarkable expansion worldwide in recent decades, being particularly remarkable in countries such as Spain. This phenomenon has had several negative impacts, among which the most notable are the excessive increase in housing prices and mortgages, as well as the housing affordability crisis. In recent years, the growth of urban tourism has exacerbated these difficulties, particularly due to the boom in tourist housing.
But another part of this picture is a grassroots social response. Even before the 2008 crisis, the first protest movements against rising housing prices emerged in Spain, such as the famous ‘no vas a tener casa en tu puta vida’ (you’ll never own a house in your fucking life) movement in 2006. In the aftermath of the 2008 crash, with its bracing impact, came the movement of people hit by mortgage difficulties (Spanish acronym PAH) and the anti-evictions struggle, playing a crucial role in the cycle of protests launched in Spain by the mobilisations of 15 March 2011 and the squares-protests movement. More recently, with the rise of urban tourism, different protest movements have emerged in various cities around the world, including Spain, especially against platforms such as Airbnb, although the scope of these protests before the pandemic was very limited.
With the COVID-19 crisis and rising house prices in today’s Spain, housing protest movements are experiencing a new dawn. This article, in addition to a diagnosis of the housing situation in Spain, focuses on a particular case that has emerged strongly in recent years, combining both housing demands and denunciation of the negative consequences of the new urban tourism. It centres on the ‘Málaga para Vivir’ protests, born in one of the Spanish cities with the greatest tourist pressure.
The financialisation of housing in Spain
Since the 1980s, financial deregulation and privatisation of social housing expanded its role as an economic asset, a process known as the financialisation of housing.1 Neoliberal policies regulating and deregulating financial flows, as well as tax breaks and state incentives or subsidies for home ownership, paved the way for such financial dominance. Moreover, technological advances and sophisticated legal mechanisms have accelerated the global hypermobility of capital, especially in association with ‘tax havens’ and criminal activities.
In the Spanish context, following the economic crisis of 2008, in which housing was a key focus, the financialisation of housing has undergone fundamental changes. In the first period, it was characterised by austerity policies promoted by the European Union and the World Bank, together with direct bailouts of banks using state funds. From 2013 onwards, the focus shifted to attracting global investors through state measures and deregulation, reviving the financialisation of the real-estate sector. This environment promoted a new wave of investment that intensified speculation and construction.2
This phenomenon has intensified with the rise of urban tourism, acting as an accelerating vector that transforms homes into commodities for tourist rentals. If the financial crisis of 2008 brought a halt to skyrocketing prices, it also opened up new investment opportunities that created income gaps globally.3 In this economic and political context, short-term rentals and platforms such as Airbnb emerged, strengthening the role of housing as a safe-haven asset. Such platforms facilitate capital flows into the real-estate sector and encourage new investment cycles, constituting an accumulation strategy induced by the tourism boom.4
Tourist rentals generate higher rents than traditional residential markets, making them attractive to investors. This has been a key contributor to the financialisation of housing and rising prices.5 It also increases landlords’ flexibility and control over their properties, as laws protecting tenants limit the economic possibilities for landlords.
New urban tourism as a contentious political issue
The global expansion of urban tourism in recent years is an indisputable phenomenon. According to the World Tourism Organization, 2018 saw 1.4 billion tourists worldwide, an increase of 6% over the previous year and the second strongest year since 2010; in 2000, there were 674 million.6 This increase in the growth of global tourism flows has had an essential urban dimension. Some authors have defended this trend as the emergence of a ‘new urban tourism’.7 It is possible to identify a combination of factors at work in the current development of these dynamics.
First, the rise of new technologies applied to tourism and to communication and transport infrastructures. Especially in Europe, the increase in the supply of low-cost airlines has multiplied possible destinations, promoting a tourism model characterised by shorter and more frequent trips.8 In addition, the emergence of platforms for the rental of rooms and flats for tourist purposes, especially Airbnb, has been a disruptive element in the way in which tourist demand is integrated into the city,9 favouring competition between residential and tourist use of the available housing stock.10
A second factor explaining the emergence of the new urban tourism is the paradigm shift in what it means to ‘be a tourist’. This shift is closely related to the desire for authenticity in today’s consumer culture.11 In this sense, it is precisely the everydayness and the feeling of the ‘authentic’ life of a city that has become a driver of attraction for visitors.12 As a result, in addition to the search for specialised tourist destinations, such as large resorts, nature or beach destinations, there has been a growing demand for ‘unique’ destinations, often linked to the lifestyle of their inhabitants.
In general, these processes can be contextualised in the development of the post-Fordist paradigm and the rise of cognitive capitalism. Thus, from a Marxist perspective, in the face of the falling rate of profit of capital-labour, capital has tended to colonise new spaces in order to continue to maintain its rate of growth based on the premise of private extraction of socially created value. Therefore, following Lefebvre’s concept of alienation of place, we can understand the city as a social construction resulting from the cooperation of its present and past inhabitants.13 Thus, intensive tourism may be defined as a process of commodification of space and, ultimately, of extraction of the value created through social cooperation. The main beneficiaries of this new scenario have turned out to be multinational companies and the platform economy.
Finally, this growth of the new urban tourism is producing speculative phenomena in housing markets, as well as driving the process of gentrification, understood as the expulsion and replacement of a neighbourhood’s population by others with greater purchasing power. In recent years, terms such as ‘overtourism’ have become popular in the field of urban studies.14 This term describes how some territories are subject to excessive tourist pressure that undermines the conditions that made these tourist activities possible. Over-tourism has also been characterised as an ‘excessive negative impact of tourism’.15 influencing the ‘authenticity’ of cities and neighbourhoods, affecting the tourist experience and local quality of life, causing inconvenience to residents.16 On the other hand, we find the term ‘touristification’, which refers specifically to the processes of increased tourist activity that generally involves the loss of residents.
The housing protest movement
This increase in tourism pressure has led to a proliferation of discontent and protests around tourism-related issues in cities.17 As in other policy areas, tourism seems to have long been depoliticised through its presentation as a non-controversial and positive development. However, in recent years, conflicts related to overtourism have erupted in many cities around the world. There is a growing body of literature on these phenomena.
In these mobilisations, it seems, the conflict between the city as a commodity and the ‘right to the city’ stands out. According to this logic, these processes of overtourism will intensify the commodification of public spaces, occupied by tourist services, and private spaces (housing and rooms), which are removed from the real-estate market and made available to an emerging tourist-accommodation market.
In recent years, protests have taken place in southern European cities such as Venice, where the Committee No Grandi Navi is fighting to prevent a new port that would allow cruise ships to enter the city centre; Florence, where the campaign #SaveFlorence focuses on defending the historical heritage from the deterioration caused by intensive tourism; Lisbon, where the collective Aquí Mora Gent denounces how noisy nightlife and leisure tourism do not respect residents’ rest; San Sebastian, where the Parte association Zaharrean Bizi Auzo denounces the touristification of the historic centre; Seville, where the collective arises Colectivo Asambleario contra la Turistización (CACTUS)18; and Mallorca, with the creation of the Plataforma Ciutat per a qui l’habita i Palma de Mallorca.
Barcelona especially stands out for its impact and inter-municipal connection. In 2015 the Assembly of Neighbourhoods for Tourist Degrowth was founded there as a response to the growing concern about the negative impact of mass tourism on local life and the environment. This movement brought together thirty-five collectives and organisations seeking alternatives to the prevailing tourism model. In July 2016, they organised the Neighbourhood Forum on Tourism in Barcelona and networked with groups in Venice, Mallorca and Malaga. Two years later, in 2018, the second Neighbourhood Forum was held with the title ‘Reflections on Tourism in Barcelona and Southern Europe’, where the SET Network was born. This network sought to dismantle the paradigm of urban tourism growth and promote a reduction of tourism.
Until the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, these movements had a protest repertoire that combined the classic forms of urban social movements with a strong presence in virtual communities as well as a strong creation of counter-hegemonic discourse against the consensus around the idea of tourism as a fundamental factor for economic development. After the pandemic, and the hiatus it brought in terms of activism in general, many of these movements were slow to recover their activity.
However, in 2024, the movement in defence of housing re-emerged with force, reaching two fundamental milestones. On the one hand, in Barcelona, which had been governed for eight years by a municipalist administration which reined in tourist accommodation, the Socialist Party came to power. It got rid of these limitations and integrated major figures from the tourist industry into the management of the sector. This, coupled with a policy of promoting new big events such as the America’s Cup, reactivated the neighbourhood movement, which organised a large protest in June, initiating a new cycle of mobilisation.
On the other hand, in Malaga — for decades governed by the conservative Popular Party, which has promoted unlimited growth — a grassroots movement arose to denounce the tourist high cost of housing. Surprisingly, this movement was a great success in its first meeting, also in June, and we will study this case in depth below.
The right to the city in post-pandemic Spain: the case of Málaga para vivir
The b-side of the miracle of Malaga: touristification, the housing emergency and the expulsion of women from neighbourhoods
For years, Malaga’s municipal government has been committed to promoting the city’s brand as part of a strategy that has even led to talk of the ‘Malaga miracle’ to refer to the good economic growth indicators and the urban transfor- mation that the city has experienced in recent decades. Malaga is presented as a top benchmark in Spain for innovation, tourism and technological develop- ment: Forbes magazine has included it in its list of the 20 best cities in the world to live, invest and work; the Report Expat City Ranking 2023 ranks it as the best city in the world to live in according to foreign residents, having displaced com- petitors such as Valencia and Barcelona; AENOR has it awarded the first certifi- cate granted to a Spanish city as a destination for digital nomads; InterNations has rated it as one of the 49 cities in the world with the best quality of life. Just by reviewing some of the rankings in which it participates, one can deduce the
For years, Malaga’s municipal government has been committed to promoting the city’s brand as part of a strategy that has even led to talk of the ‘Malaga miracle’ to refer to the good economic growth indicators and the urban transformation that the city has experienced in recent decades.
strategy of building the Malaga brand and the mantra ‘Malaga is fashionable’, in which one of the main values for attracting investors is quality of life.
First, we have seen the development of a municipal strategy aimed at making Malaga an international capital of culture. Picasso’s Malaga aspired to strengthen its cultural value as one of its main tourist attractions. Despite the precarious cultural infrastructure and the scant support for local creators, in successive strategic plans the city bet on becoming the Malaga of Museums, closely linked to the promotion of tourism. This strategy bore fruit with the Picasso Museum (2003), the Contemporary Art Centre (2003), the Carmen Thyssen Museum (2011), the Russian Museum (2015) and the Pompidou Centre (2015), among others. This also left corpses along the way (well paid-for with public resources and propaganda), such as the failed Museum of Precious Gems (it opened for two hours), on which the City Council squandered €8 million (its management prompted a first Commission of Inquiry at the municipal level) or the candidacy to become European capital of culture in 2016, competing with neighbouring Córdoba. More recently, the new sector from which to attract investment is that of the new technologies, innovation and knowledge: the opening of the Google security centre; the (municipally managed) Digital Pole; the planned opening of the IMEC microelectronics centre; or the continuous claims selling good living and good investment in Malaga for digital nomads, all go in this direction. A new value for the brand, with the same strategy, and same objectives19. Every time the debate opens up about the city’s dependence on the tourism sector, there pop up the gurus of what now aspires to be the little Silicon Valley of the South.
However, there is no ranking or brand that covers the levels of inequality and precariousness that exist in the city, nor the process of misappropriation and accumulation of properties for speculative purposes, which has been deployed by investment funds and big capital-owners.
The data on average income in Malaga published by the INE in 2023, shows a profound inequality between neighbourhoods: Palma-Palmilla, Puerta Blanca and Campanillas are below €9,000 per inhabitant per year. Palma-Palmilla is once again among the neighbourhoods with the lowest income in Spain. There are seven neighbourhoods in the city that are classified as areas in need of social transformation, i.e. with structural and chronic levels of social and economic vulnerability. Life expectancy also differs depending on the postcode. In the neighbourhood of Los Asperones, a temporary settlement whose temporary existence has by now been extended across some forty years, life expectancy stands at 51.
Malaga has already surpassed the maximum rental prices registered during the real-estate boom of 2007. In the last four years the price of rent has increased by 48%, making it the Andalusian city with the highest prices and the fourth highest in Spain. This has caused the displacement of the local population, in the first place, towards the metropolitan area, also affected by the increase in prices and touristification. In municipalities such as Torremolinos, Fuengirola and Benalmádena, the average rent is now over €1,000 per month, already exceeding the prices of the capital three years ago. 94% of the properties in Malaga are above the State Reference Price Index published by the Ministry of Housing. In spite of all this, it has still not been declared by the Andalusian Regional Government as an under-stress area, which would make it possible to reduce the price of rents, as has already happened in the cities of Catalonia that have been recognised with this instrument under the State Housing Law.
In Malaga, 45% of home purchases are made without a mortgage loan, making it the Spanish province with the second-highest number of transactions without a mortgage. According to the INE, the census of empty homes in Malaga now stands at 16,000. The province has the highest number of tourist homes in Spain, with half of the Andalusian ones in Malaga (in February 2024 there were 41,038 registered). In Malaga city, one out of every three properties for rent is a tourist property. During 2024, seven tourist dwellings were registered per day. The municipalities of Malaga, Marbella and Mijas are among the ten Spanish municipalities with the highest number of registered tourist properties. In the city centre, data published by the INE in February 2024 show that seven out of every ten properties in the area around the Plaza de la Merced, where Pablo Picasso and Victoria Kent were born, are already tourist properties.
This process of replacing the social function of housing with speculative purposes is not limited to the city centre. Since 2018, according to the Institute of Urban and Social Studies, the number of tourist homes has increased by 310% in Huelin, 270% in El Palo and 244% in Pedregalejo. This is despite the fact that the General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) has stipulated since 2011 that dwellings without a separate entrance could not be authorised for tourist use. For thirteen years the city hall has been in breach of its own urban planning regulations, allowing and facilitating deregulation and the law of the jungle. This is in turn generating an enormous impact on the price of housing and also on the transformation of the city’s neighbourhoods. After thirteen years of non-compliance, the City Council, following the mobilisation of 29 June, announced that it was now going to comply with its PGOU. Subsequently, it has presented a modification of the PGOU, the foreseeable effect of which will be to favour the expansion of tourist housing to all of the city’s neighbourhoods. Indeed, the mayor himself disavowed his own proposal on the eve of the 9 November, 2024 protests. However, despite the ineffective announcements made, the reality is that in 2024, 2,202 tourist dwellings were registered, a higher number than in the same period of the previous year.
Job insecurity is one of the defining characteristics of the tourism sector. Labour disputes in the hotel and catering and commerce sector, such as those involving chambermaids or those who opposed the declaration of Malaga as a Zone of Great Tourist Influence, speak to the precarity in the sector. They show that the working class that ensures the continued operation of the main sector in the province has not benefited from the wealth that it has generated20. The Bank of Spain points out that the presence of tourist housing is pushing up the price of rental housing, the cumulative growth of rental rents per square metre between 2015 and 2022 exceeds 40% in seven municipalities nationwide, three of them in Andalusia: Estepona (over 50%), Malaga and Torremolinos.
On the other hand, based on data from the Ministry of Finance for 2022, the average income in Malaga is 35th out of 48, being €3,338 per inhabitant below the state average. The average gross annual salary is €19,443, while the average rental price is some €1,452 per month. Therefore, renting in Malaga city takes up a single person’s entire income.
According to the Metropolitan Environment Observatory, attached to Malaga city council, Malaga is experiencing a ‘large-scale gentrification’, meaning the ‘replacement of the original resident population by a new one with greater resources’. The loss of the local population particularly affects the 25-40 age group. This is confirmed by the municipal census data for 2023: the foreign resident population is increasing, while the local population is being lost and displaced to other municipalities.
The Málaga brand has been on the rise, as a kind of top-of-the-class pupil of the neoliberal city, in which public administrations have operated as instruments to attract investors and promote the city for tourism. So much so that the city council even set up a special department to promote the city and attract investors, which promoted campaigns such as ‘Malaga, the best home office in Europe’. Malaga’s bid to host the 2027 Expo ‘The urban era, towards the sustainable city’, which eventually failed, was a large-scale operation in brand promotion, urban speculation and, to make matters worse, used ‘sustainability’ to these promotional ends. Jorge Dioni has analysed this process, pointing out the role of cities in neoliberalism ‘as commodities with the capacity to create value, as something to be sold’. Dioni defines the case of Malaga as ‘a city that has triumphed in attracting flows’21. The arrival of investors and people with higher incomes than the local population has an impact on the increase in property prices and on the imbalances in the city’s productive fabric. All municipal strategies have hinged on this objective, which is to turn Malaga into a competitive tourist destination that is attractive for private investors. The rise in housing prices, the abusive occupation of public space and the transformation of neighbourhoods into places alien to their own residents are only collateral damage which, until the outbreak of the 29J and 9N demonstrations, have been cultivating a grinding social unrest.
Yet, the effort to expand the city centre continues apace. The urban regeneration processes which, with European funds, have had the effect of gentrifying areas such as the historic centre, the Calle Carreterías or the old Ensanche del Muelle Heredia (now renamed Soho), turning them into places frequented mainly by tourists, are now extending to neighbourhoods such as Perchel, Huelin, la Trinidad or Lagunillas. Operations such as the San Andrés marina, the Lagunillas regeneration project currently underway or the bridge-squares over the Guadalmedina river are part of this strategy. The loss of identity suffered by the city centre, which has become a theme park dotted with franchises that, if it were not for the Cathedral, could well be the centre of any other city, extends to all of Malaga’s neighbourhoods. Hence the slogan of the mobilisation on 9 November (9N): if they kick us out of the neighbourhoods, we will shut down the city. Even the Fair and Easter Week have become touristified, giving rise to Dantesque scenes that reflect some of the dimensions of the conflict in Malaga: the disaffection growing towards a city that is suffering the loss of identity and recognition by those who live there, and the perception that all public space is liable to being put at the service of private business.
A city for sale: à la carte urban planning and the privatisation of public space
The Municipal Urbanism Administration has even created a Project Accelerator Unit in 2024, to ‘speed up’ and ‘simplify’ the processing of certain ‘high-im- pact’ projects, generating a de facto two-speed urban planning. It is easy to guess who will benefit from the faster one. These ‘strategic’ projects are leading to a rise in housing prices and the transformation of popular neighbourhoods such as the Carretera de Cádiz or the area around Palma-Palmilla (with the Martiricos towers), with the associated processes of gentrification.
During these years, an à la carte urban development has grown, functional to the process of property accumulation, with speculative operations that have been decapitalising the municipal patrimonial stock, despite strong neighbourhood opposition in some cases. To mention just a few of these operations: a Qatari investment fund’s construction of a skyscraper on the Dique de Levante to house a luxury hotel, right in front of one of the city’s most outstanding heritage symbols, the lighthouse La Farola; the construction of four skyscrapers that would be home to offices, housing and commercial space on the former Repsol land, right in the most densely populated district in all of Europe, where neighbours are demanding an Urban Forest; and the cession of municipal land in La Térmica and El Romeral for a modest price so that the two new private universities (Universidad Europea and Universidad Alfonso X), which the Junta de Andalucía has planned to land in Málaga, can be set up.
Land that was once home to industrial warehouses is now seeing luxury housing developments or tourist flat blocks being built, with the consequent impact on housing prices, on the type of shops in the surrounding area, and on public spaces. There are luxury developments, at the cost of overexploitation of natural resources and a high environmental impact, such as that planned for Pinares de San Antón. We see urban development operations which, in the midst of the housing crisis, exempt developers from complying with the legal obligation to build 30% subsidised housing (VPO) in the sector, with the argument that the type of housing to be developed is not ‘typical of a VPO’.
We are faced with the stark image of a city for sale, in which the purchase by investment funds of entire blocks of flats, which end up as tourist accommodation, is the norm, and where ground-floor commercial sites are being massively repurposed for the same purpose. Where there used to be a grocery store or a bakery, there is now tourist accommodation. The historic building on the Calle Ollerías, owned by the Junta de Andalucía, which for twenty years was the headquarters of the NGO Málaga Acoge, now, under the ownership of the Israeli investment fund White, will be converted into a block of tourist flats. On the banks of the Guadalmedina river, where for decades the headquarters of the province’s post office was located, an Israeli magnate will now build a luxury hotel, increasing occupancy and volume, again as a result of an urban development operation plagued by dubious legal chicanery and evading compensation for the loss of land destined for amenities. This is all for the sake of ‘quality tourism’ — the new mantra, to counteract the malaise associated with tourism that consumes tourist housing. This will be another debate, which is already beginning to come into view: the municipal authorities are beginning to explore the possibility of limiting hotels of less than 5 stars. They intend to resolve the debate on the social and environmental impacts of tourist over-saturation by means of classism. This is all to extend the centre beyond the Guadalmedina river. Once again, the city is for sale, at the expense of the city itself.
In the meantime, the municipal register of housing applicants continues to grow. More than 30,000 people are registered, hoping to be the lucky ones in a city where, according to the General Council of the Judiciary, between three and four evictions are carried out every day. The municipal government and the real estate lobby insist that the solution to the housing crisis lies in building more housing, as if the problem were merely a matter of supply. Meanwhile, they avoid putting a stop to tourist flats or intervening to make use of empty homes. Building more housing is not going to lower prices. In fact, it has the opposite effect, as proven by experience. The key is to intervene in the housing market and change the course of urban-planning and housing policies that have been dedicated to protecting the interests of the real-estate lobby. This demands limiting tourist flats, prohibiting speculative uses of housing, lowering rental prices and promoting public housing at affordable prices, changing laws to avoid their disqualification or them remaining in the hands of investment funds.
In many of these cases, plural citizen initiatives have been launched, which have attracted and mobilised thousands of supporters, and have even brought legal proceedings over urban development operations such as the skyscraper in the port or on the former Repsol land. In spite of this, the city council has refused to set up mechanisms for citizen consultation and has continued with the process, although at the moment it is stuck in a standby situation that will not be resolved until the legal proceedings are completed.
29J as a turning point for those demanding the right to the city
On 29 June, 2024 (known as 29J), more than 20,000 people took to the streets under the slogan ‘Malaga to live in, not to survive’. ‘Houses are for living’ the demonstrators chanted, demanding the resignation of the housing minister. With a leading role played by a young generation, which is becoming politicised in this process, for the first time in decades there was a mobilisation that recognises Malaga city hall as one of the main architects of the massive and discretionary gentrification that this model is generating. This citizen mobilisation was a response to the situation of housing emergency which, in the case of Malaga, is paradigmatic. But this was also a challenge to a model of the city and of production that has reached its limits, that has not redistributed the wealth generated in the tourist sector, and that is itself at the root of the housing crisis.
The social unrest that led to this mass mobilisation had been brewing for some time. For years, Malaga had been the scene of various struggles for the right to the city, such as the demand for an Urban Forest on the Repsol land, the defence of La Farola against a project for a Qatar skyscraper, or the opposition to the demolition of the Perchel neighbourhood to build a residential development. This discontent also manifested itself in the defence of the Casa Invisible Social and Cultural Centre against a municipal eviction and in the struggle of residents in Huelin, el Romeral and the historic centre, who have denounced problems of coexistence owing to tourist saturation. They have achieved legal victories such as the Plaza Mitjana ruling, which condemned city hall for failing to address noise and violating residents’ right to privacy.
This latent unrest emerged as a reaction to the increase in housing prices, and the expulsion of more and more female residents, first from their neighbourhoods and then from the city, as well as the impact of the proliferation of tourist housing on prices, coexistence and the use (and abuse) of public space. This first demonstration was followed by a further one on 9 November, coordinated with other cities, under the slogan ‘If they kick us out of the neighbourhoods, we will shut down the city’. People in Malaga thus connected with the struggles in defence of the right to the city and against tourist saturation that are taking place in particularly tourism-dominated cities in the Balearics, the Canaries, Valencia, Galicia and Andalusia. But this also connected with the mobilisations that were taking place throughout Spain in defence of the right to housing, which had a milestone event on 13 October, mobilising thousands of people in Madrid and other cities. This latter demanded a reduction in rents, denouncing renting and speculation, against which the Spanish government must take a position and concrete measures as a matter of urgency.
The so-called ‘Malaga miracle’ has burst at the seams. The tenants — those who cannot access housing, but also those who cannot recognise themselves in this city that they want to inhabit — have broken what has for years been the hegemonic discourse both inside and outside Malaga. It has crumbled to such a point that even groups linked to the municipal government, which were previously its ideological battering ram, have been forced to publicly accept that the city is under stress and that it is necessary to adopt measures to facilitate access to housing and establish some order in the sphere of tourist accommodation.
This is no small matter, considering that it is the same sectors that have benefited from this model and that have been trying for years to criminalise and place on the political sidelines any questioning of the city model that has sustained Francisco De la Torre and the Partido Popular in the mayor’s office for the last 29 years. ‘Tourismphobia’ and ‘Jihadism’ have been some of the adjectives used in political forums and debates. The councillor responsible for housing even accused the 29 June demonstration of ‘racism’.
The recognition of this contradiction in the city model, which has even reached the municipal plenary, is the merit of a social movement that has
The so-called ‘Malaga miracle’ has burst at the seams. The tenants — those who cannot access housing, but also those who cannot recog- nise themselves in this city that they want to inhabit — have broken what has for years been the he- gemonic discourse both inside and outside Malaga.
overflowed and has contributed to the formation of a new common sense about the crisis of access to housing, which is spreading at the same speed as tourist housing: it is impossible to live in Malaga because housing is treated as a speculative asset and not as a right.
Conclusion
Malaga has its Christmas lights, its lantern festivals in public parks, its big events, its candidacies for international exhibitions, and its top positions in rankings of cities. But all this can never be enough to cover up the exclusion that affects the majority of working people in the city, the inequalities that they suffer, or the subordination of public space to private business. Tourist saturation — with the proliferation of tourist housing as its main spearhead, as well as its impact on everyday life — has fuelled a feeling of weariness with public pol- icies in which it seems that residents are the lowest priority. This perception is growing in the city. Touristification has caused urban planning and services to be focused exclusively on the tourist business, disregarding the rights of the local population. The needs of the city and its neighbourhoods have been undermined by unbridled and unregulated tourist activity in which the law of the strongest prevails. A smile for tourism, as the Andalusian Minister of Tourism would say. Meanwhile, residents do not even get the crumbs from the table of the Malaga miracle — and instead, they are being expelled from the city.
The 9N mobilisation once again exceeded all expectations of participation. The manifesto under the title ‘Another city is coming’, read by its organisers at the end of the demonstration, expresses the collective determination to build another city from below. This means building a city from the neighbourhoods and based on their leading role, in which community ties, mutual care and the sustainability of life are at the centre. This means the cost of housing, but also the climate emergency and precarity. The mobilisations of 29J and 9N showed that it is no longer time for cosmetic or hesitating institutional measures to alleviate the current crisis. It is time to conquer the right to the city for all. This process will only be possible if political processes of neighbourhood selforganisation are built, slowly and in a long-term perspective.
Endnotes
1 Manuel B. Aalbers, ‘The Variegated Financialization of Housing’, Inter- national Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 41(4), 2017, pp. 542–
554. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12522
2 Miguel A. Martínez & Javier Gil, ‘Grassroots Struggles Challenging Housing Financialization in Spain’, Housing Studies, 39(6), 2024, pp. 1516–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2022.2036328
3 Brett Christophers, Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns Economy, and Who Pays for It?, Verso Books, 2020.
4 Javier Gil and Miguel A. Martínez, ‘State-Led Actions Reigniting the Fi- nancialization of Housing in Spain’, Housing, Theory and Society, 40(1), 2023, pp. 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2021.2013316
5 Agustín Cocola-Gant & Ana Gago, ‘Airbnb, Buy-to-Let Investment and Tourism-Driven Dispalacement: A Case Study in Lisbon’, Environment and Planning A, July 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X19869012
6 Rodolphe Christin, Manual del antiturismo, Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2018.
7 Henning Füller and Boris Michel, ‘“Stop Being a Tourist!” New Dynam- ics of Urban Tourism in Berlin-Kreuzberg’, International Journal of Ur- ban and Regional Research, 38(4), 2014, pp. 1304–1318. https://doi. org/10.1111/1468-2427.12124/. Cecilia Pasquinelli, ‘Urban Tourism(s): Is There a Case for a Paradigm Shift?’, SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2584894.
8 Esther Martínez-García and Josep María Raya, ‘Length of Stay for Low-Cost Tourism’, Tourism Management, 29(6), 2008, pp. 1064–1075. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2008.02.011
9 Daniel Guttentag, ‘Airbnb: Disruptive Innovation and the Rise of an In- formal Tourism Accommodation Sector’, Current Issues in Tourism, 18(12), 2015, pp. 1192–1217. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2013.827
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10 Agustín Cocola-Gant and Ana Gago, ‘Airbnb, Buy-to-Let Investment and Tourism-Driven Displacement: A Case Study in Lisbon’, Environment and Planning A, July 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X19869012
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