From modernizing and feeder tourism to invasive and unsustainable touristification

If an unwelcome visitor arrives at your front door, you have three options: not opening the door, giving a polite excuse or slamming the door in their face. This year, some 91 million tourists will come to visit us, almost twice as many as residents. The problem with getting them out is that they don’t come alone: ​​they are accompanied by some 200 billion euros, 13% of the Gross Domestic Product and 20% of direct and indirect employment. Not just anyone can invite them in, even by rolling out the red carpet for them.

Although there are those who do not want to put it on, because that “anyone” is in macroeconomic limbo, where he does not know, or despises, what happens in the street of every day: tourism has become ‘touristified’ and there is no Spanish population with something to offer that does not want to become ‘touristified’. Touristification is a term coined by the French geographer Rémy Knafou from the term gentrification (from the English gentry: upper class, upper bourgeoisie) –which is the urban displacement of a wealthy social class to the detriment of another with less purchasing power– to define the displacement of residents from an area of ​​tourist interest to satisfy the needs of tourists. For the Fundación del Español Urgente (Fundéu), touristification defines the impact that mass tourism has on the commercial and social fabric of neighborhoods or cities and touristification is the process by which a destination becomes touristic.