The prohibition of tourist apartments and stopping the promotion of the city have been two of the requests that the participants in a demonstration called in San Sebastián by the Bizilagunekin platform demanded this Sunday to request a decrease in tourism in the Gipuzkoa capital.
This demand has been featured on the headline banner of the march, in which more than a thousand people left the Alderdi Eder gardens at 12:00 and walked through several streets of the Old Town and the center to conclude in Easo Square.
The protest has had the support of more than fifty associations, groups and organizations from San Sebastián, among which are Stop Evictions, Ulia Neighborhood Association, Martutene Bizirik, Eguzki, Ekologistak Martxan and the unions ELA, LAB, ESK, CCOO, CNT and Steilas.
During the tour, shouts were chanted like ‘Housing is a right, not a business’‘No tourism, yes housing’ and ‘Donostia ez dago salei’ (Donostia is not for sale).
The spokesperson for the Donostiarras Platform for Tourism Degrowth, Bizilagunekin, Asier Basurto, has highlighted in statements to the media the need to “put the living conditions of the inhabitants at the center” ahead of “always favoring tourism businesses”.
In that sense, he highlighted that the city model of San Sebastián “It has been done to favor business” in that sector, “which increasingly worsens the living conditions of citizens.”
He stressed that there is “an expulsion process” of the people of San Sebastián in their city due to the high cost of housing, which “is very evident and is corroborated by the data.”
“The city is losing the best it has in favor of the business of a few,” he considered.
For this reason, the platform it represents advocates for “the path of tourism degrowth” that entails a “change of model” and is not limited to “aesthetic measures such as limiting tourist groups.”
Basurto has defended a “global” change that must go through the prohibition of tourist apartments, because in a “place where the demand for housing is so evident, it is not legitimate” for apartments with these characteristics to exist.
The spokesperson for Stop Evictions, Rosa García, has stated the same thing, recalling that 40% of the tourist homes in the Basque Autonomous Community are in San Sebastiánto which is added the “scourge” of temporary contracts, “which lack any type of regulation,” he assured.
“It is not enough with the moratorium alone, we must decrease“We must limit the number of tourist apartments that are removing and stealing residential homes,” García denounced.
He has also advocated mobilizing the “5,000 empty homes that exist in the city” and reduce the “very high rents caused by investment funds.”
García has demanded from the mayor of San Sebastián, Eneko Goia, to “send now” the documentation to declare a stressed area to the city and “the abusive rents of the large owners, who have more than 3,000 homes, can be limited” in the capital of Gipuzkoa.
Representatives of the Ulia Neighborhood Association have recalled that the problems derived from tourism They occur in many cities.
“We are all tourists and we are destroying ways of life around the world”they have pointed out.
They have stressed that “It is not the market that has to self-regulate, but the public authority” which must be regulated “based on the wishes and good life of citizens.”
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