A play about boorish British tourists has become a hit in Barcelona as anger grows at the antics of drunken foreigners.
Guiris Go Home sold out four nights at the Antic theatre last week and more shows are planned for June. The play will also be staged in Madrid. Guiris is Spanish slang for foreigners.
The comedy, set in a theatre, is based on a group of tourists who talk loudly on their telephones, visit the lavatory during the performance and shout “boring” when a song is played about Antoni Gaudí, the architect whose unfinished church — La Sagrada Família — is one of the city’s landmarks. Barcelona has experienced a huge rise in tourism since it hosted the Olympics in 1992, helped in part by the arrival of low-cost flights.
About 200 people staged protests in Barceloneta, on the city’s seafront, in August after a series of drunken parties in which naked and drunken tourists rampaged through the streets. There were also protests near La Sagrada Família, and in Gracía, a fashionable city centre district.
Marc Caellas, who wrote the play, said that it allowed locals to express their anger about an explosion that many feel is overwhelming the city. “The idea of the play was to show through humour how people feel, but for the audience it was also a way to let out that anger,” he said. Caellas, 40, has also written a book called Carcelona, about how, in his opinion, the city has become a tourist theme-park. Carcel is Spanish for prison. He said that while tourism created local jobs in Barcelona this came at a cost that other cities such as Venice and Prague were also paying.
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“You cannot say that tourists who buy jeans for €200 in Paseo de Gràcia [one of the city’s luxury shopping areas] are good for the city. It makes money for a multinational and a pittance for a local person.”
Last year 16.7 million tourists visited Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital — a 7.2 per cent increase on 2013. More than 1.78 million Britons visited the region, the second biggest group by nationality after the French.
In response to the protests, Barcelona city council has stopped granting new licences to tourist flats in Barceloneta and drafted in more inspectors to ensure they conform with regulations. At La Sagrada Família, tourists must queue inside the grounds of the church, not on the street, after objections from residents.
Barcelona, like Majorca and other tourist hotspots in Spain, has introduced fines of up to €300 (£215) for wearing only a bikini or swimming trunks away from the beach. Drinking alcohol in the street is also punishable in some resorts by an on-the-spot fine.