After three relentless years of opposing mass tourism, harassing backpackers, and chaining himself to church fountains to protest Airbnb conversions, local anti-tourist activist Jose Marquez has announced he needs a break — specifically, a holiday.
“I just need to get away from it all,” he sighed, while leafleting a flight of Dutch cyclists with ‘GO HOME’ stickers.
Jose, 38, became a national figure in the Stop Tourists Movement after he doused a travel influencer in paella outside a Valencian cathedral, shouting, “This isn’t your story to aestheticise!” His e-book The Airbnb Apocalypse: How Tourism Ate the Soul of the City briefly topped niche Amazon charts in “Urban Despair” and “Light Cookbooks”.
Living in perpetual fear of being caught by the “anti-tourist” mafia, Jose tries to cover his tracks as best he can.
“I secretly look at holiday websites and dream of going on a long cruise maybe somewhere in the Caribbean, or booking a flight to Benidorm for a debauched cheap all-inclusive package holiday of booze, sex and drugs with all the crazy Brits. I was nearly caught browsing holidays, only yesterday, but quickly switched the page I was looking at and deleted my browser cache. I think I am in denial.”
Jose candidly admits, he’s burnt out and needs a holiday.
“The protests, the graffiti, the Marxist anti-capitalist anti-tourist manifestos typed in rage in a broken tower block — I started to feel… watched. Judged. Like a tourist in my own ideology.”
He describes an existential crisis brought on by a day trip to Marseille to film a documentary entitled Cruise Ships: Floating Cathedrals of Capitalist Decay.
“We were in cattle class for irony. But I enjoyed the croissants. I even looked up a boutique hotel — I kind of relished it.”
“If the anti-tourist people catch me looking for holidays on the net, or god forbid, actually going on holiday, I don’t think I will be able to live it down. Oh, the shame!”
As he secretly boards a carbon-neutral ferry with a small suitcase and a large hat, Jose insists he’ll return rejuvenated. “The revolution doesn’t rest,” he says. “But revolutionaries do also need a holiday sometimes.”
Tell him to come to the UK where he can be stabbed to death walking to a shop.
I have been travelling to Spain for 40 years and have spent much money there. The way they have treated us Brits recently is frankly a disgrace. I will never go there ever again.
If the Spaniards do not want my plentiful cash I will simply go elsewhere. FCK THOSE FRANCO LOVING FASCIST GREASY BASTARDS
We’re going to Goa this year and avoiding the stupid dagos. If they want to go bankrupt good luck to them.
NEVER GOING TO SPAIN EVER AGAIN AND WILL NEVER BUY ANY SPANISH PRODUCT EVER AGAIN. I URGE EVERYONE ELSE TO DO THE SAME.
Me and wifey were thinking of buying a place in Andalusia. The amount of red tape and regulations they put in front of us made us give up. It’s not worth it and they keep changing their stupid silly laws constantly you never know what is going on or get any kind of certainty. I’ve heard some Brits having their properties seized all of a sudden on a whim by some Spanish militant leftist politician. Well, if they don’t want my 750,000 euros I’ll go to Portugal or Italy instead.
Hit the nail on the head with this one. Interestingly enough my family is completely missing Spain this year and we’re going to Turkey.