More than 60 people from the Moviment Alcudienc have protested against “the overcrowding and private occupation of the municipality, with shops and restaurants focused on tourism, which cause the loss of public space for local residents”.
According to a press release issued by the organisation, the protest action took place last Thursday in the Plaça de la Constitució, “one of the most crowded areas in Alcudia”.
Members of the movement met in the square to show “the little free space left to walk and use as residents of the town”.
In addition, the Moviment Alcudienc read a manifesto in which they spoke of their “concern for the transformation the town has undergone over the years”. “Alcudia is disappearing as a stable nucleus of coexistence and is becoming a showcase at the service of tourists,” they added.
They complained that there is a “disappearance of traditional shops, privatisation of public space, more inland hotels, more tourist rentals, saturation of beaches, consumption of resources, environmental degradation and overload of infrastructures”.
As a consequence of this tourist model, they continued, “the town is losing its identity in leaps and bounds and the residents are being displaced”.
In addition, they also complained that “it is very difficult to access housing due to the exaggerated price of rents and that a totally precarious service sector predominates”.
They also referred to the policies of recent years which, “despite the fact that they have been selling the idea that they were trying to solve the problem, they have not confronted this model and have simply dedicated themselves to making timid reforms, such as the law on circularity in the tourism sector, the moratorium on tourist places and the law on waste”.
The organisation has encouraged the council and the opposition parties to take “more forceful” measures, such as “opposing the lifting of the moratorium on tourist places, limiting and controlling the number of tables that bars can lay out on their terraces, or using public space and buildings for residents with the aim of facilitating their participation in the public life of the municipality”.