Margalida Ramis, the chief spokesperson for GOB, not being a tourist in Playa de Palma. | Archive

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The United Nations World Tourism Day, which was yesterday, was not anything to celebrate where environmentalists GOB were concerned. "We do not celebrate World Tourism Day at all. But we want to take advantage of it in order to demand, as we did on Saturday with more than 3,000 people on the streets, limits to the tourism industry and economic and tourism policies which genuinely break the current model."

GOB insist that the demonstration on Saturday was a success and that it will act as a springboard for a broader campaign. This is the creation of a network of cities that "are affected by the tourism industry". In addition to Palma, these are Barcelona, Lisbon, Madrid, Valencia and Venice.

Groups from these cities came to Palma in June for a meeting. The aim, according to GOB, is a network of collaboration between different places "faced with the excesses of intensive tourism monoculture". This network would publicise the consequences of this monoculture, for example overuse of land and resources, labour exploitation and job insecurity. Together with different groups and movements "of resistance to touristic processes", GOB will be working on a manifesto at a European level for coordinated actions to address a shared problem.