PALMA City Council may be cleaning the walls and hunting down the graffiti artists who have been spraying slogans like “tourist you are the terrorist, tourism is destroying the city” and “tourists go home, refugees welcome” but the sad thing is that the actions of a minority have made the news across Europe - what a great advert for Palma.
What is more, ironically, Spain got a telling off from the EU this week for not having taken in any refugees since last year!
But the country has welcomed millions of tourists who have spent billions of euros, created hundreds of thousands of jobs and dragged the country just about out of recession - nothing else has but tourism, it is the industry that keeps this country alive and is certainly the economic driving force of the Balearics.
I do not want to be harsh, but I consider myself a realist, and I would rather have a couple of million tourists coming to the Balearics than a handful of refugees - I, as do the hundreds of thousands employed in the tourist industry and related activities, have to stay alive too. Obviously, we can help the refugee crisis, although perhaps governments should properly lead the way, but I really do not think ditching tourism for ‘refugeeism’, if there is such a word, is a sensible idea. As for a tourist, a terrorist, the most successful slogan the Balearics ever came up with was “a tourist a friend”. Who needs friends with graffiti artists like these?
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