Malaga, Spain, Jun 29 (EFE).- Thousands of people protested Saturday in Malaga against the “unsustainable” housing and rental situation in the city and to demand a change to a tourist model that would allow locals to be able to afford to live in the popular Mediterranean tourist hotspot.
Some 5,500 people attended, according to police, chanting slogans such as “Malaga is not for sale” and “We want to live, not survive” during the demonstration. The organizers of the march said as many as 25,000 people had attended.
The protest was held because of a “widely shared malaise: the impossibility of accessing housing”, the “eviction” of residents from their neighborhoods and the closure of local businesses, organizers said.
Deputy and secretary general of the left-wing Podemos party, Ione Barrera, attended the march through the center of Malaga. In remarks to reporters, she called for “”forceful and courageous” measures against the phenomenon of so-called ‘touristification’ such as a moratorium on tourist housing.
“The people are saying loud and clear that cities are for living, they are not for tourists,” she said, because Malaga “can not stand it anymore.”
The secretary general of the left-wing Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) of Malaga, Daniel Perez, who was also at the march, urged city authorities to “take note” of the people of Malaga and to “make a move”.
He pointed out that municipalities such as Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao have already taken steps to curb the growth of tourist housing, while Malaga “has looked the other way,” he said.
According to the Union of Tenants, one of the groups behind the march, as of June 12 there were 12,196 dwellings for tourist use registered in Malaga, which equates to 63,594 vacancies.
In some areas, such as the surroundings of the Plaza de La Merced, 68.9% of the homes are dedicated to tourism. EFE
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