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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Yes, just imagine that a city tries to deal with being overrun. They don't hate the tourists, they try to stay as organized as they can.

There is such a thing as being too popular and the tourists converging on Barcelona are starting to make life for the people that live there harder and harder (rising rents, for once thing).

You'll be more than welcome in Barcelona, it's a fantastic place to visit though you'll have to count with insane waiting times at the various 'sights' that are on every tourists 'must see' list.

But try to play by the rules if you can.

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I'm sure you are welcoming, but when the streets are painted with anti tourist messaging, then "you'll be more than welcome" sounds a bit hollow.

I've been in Barcelona multiple times over the last few years and it's one of my favorite cities. There are few places where the locals are as accommodating towards tourists but there are limits to how big a proportion of tourists : citizens you can have before there have to be some rules.

The fact that rent prices have jumped up tremendously to the point where locals are pushed out of Barcelona to make way for yet more professionally run AirBnB hotels (which are open 24x7 and all year round) does not help either.

If you see this as 'anti-tourist' imagine that the town or city where you currently live becomes the next hot thing in tourism and you'll be forced to go live somewhere else, or it will be impossible for you to get a spot on the beach in your city and so on. Sooner or later you too would be a big proponent of some reasonable restrictions.

I've seen some incredibly rude and downright criminal things in and near Barcelona on account of people who were just there for a few days, if anything the population is very restrained in how they are dealing with this, especially because it is for a large fraction of them their daily bread and butter.

But I'm really not surprised by what is happening there, the same is happening in many other tourist spots the world over (Amsterdam being another one, for instance).

I've lived in a handful of "next hot thing" towns. In the United States and Canada and have yet to see anti-tourist stories that seem to originate out of parts of Europe.

Which "next hot thing" touristic towns are there in USA and Canada?

Paris, Texas!

The streets aren't painted with tourist messaging. Some streets have some anti-tourist graffiti. Teenage edge-lord shitheads are a world-wide phenomenon. If you don't want to visit Barcelona because of some graffiti, you'd better stay inside your house 24/7 in Chicago for fear of being shot.

You won't find anti-tourist graffiti in Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco, or Las Vegas.

Sorry, but Chicago and LA aren't of the same "caliber" as Barcelona is, when it comes to "tourist city". Unless you've been to Paris in August or Barcelona...any time of year....you don't know what I mean.

Of course it's not weird to see tourists in NYC or San Fran but tourists are literally everywhere in popular European cities. In Paris, in the summer, it feels like most of Japan and China decided to move there.

I've been in brew pubs in Barcelona where American English is coming out of 50% of the patrons.

So, no, it just doesn't compare.

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