The gravity of mass tourism in San Sebastian and other parts of the Basque Country is not funny at all. The gentrification that this causes is not funny at all. The profound impact this has on the lives of witnesses is not funny: precarious jobs, the commodification of the city, the increase in the price of life and the dismantling of the social fabric of the neighborhood and the feeling of strangeness in the neighborhood, among others.

It’s no fun to talk about this kind of frivolity in the media about the urban model that is being built around tourism. We are used to reading this type of chronicles —since all the chronicle is in line with the established phrase— in the media with Diario Vasco or a similar line, but it hurts to see that they have written so indifferently about tourism in a medium like Gara. We need to be more attentive and firm in this regard.

Mass tourism in data

In 2016, visitors have slept in San Sebastian 1,894,610 times, the previous year but 8.4% more. Donostia 2016 is the data collected during the press conference held by the City Council on 4 April to report on the economic impact of the European Capital of Culture in the city. That is, visitors spent ten nights in the city for every San Sebastián, 146,815 more nights in hotels or hostels in the city than in the previous year.

At the press conference, the councilor for Tourism, Ernesto Gasco, said that the capital had barely achieved its validity. “Little impact,” El País titled the news.

The data provided by Airbnb is also useful to explain the tourism in San Sebastián. Airbnb is a platform to offer irregular rentals for visitors for a while, and its data in San Sebastian has been investigated by Hirikilabs and Montera34.According to the study, while this platform offers 361 places in Vitoria-Gasteiz, and 1,484 in Bilbao, it offers 4,553 in San Sebastian.

In proportion, eight of the ten UAE neighborhoods with the highest number of Airbnb ads per household are in San Sebastian. Igueldo (6.05% of homes are on Airbnb), Ategorrieta-Ulia (3.51%) and Donostia-San Sebastián Centro (3.15%) have the highest proportions.

Map prepared by Hirikilabs and Montera34 to explain the data:

The threat of gentrification

These data are worrying, and even more so when it is necessary to take a walk through La Concha and the Old Town at certain times of the year and avoid tourist flooding. We seem to have forgotten that the Old Town is another neighborhood and that the locals have the right to live quietly, and we have become accustomed to seeing that every time it arrives in the summer it has been taken over by tourists. Little by little, and Mayor Eneko Goia welcomed the “deseasonalization” of tourism, that is, the growing influx of tourists even outside the summer. It has authorized the construction of twenty new hotels, which will have another 1,200 beds for tourists.

“People with greater purchasing power in gentrification processes expel people from the neighborhood”, explained Asier Abaunza, Councilor for Urban Planning of Bilbao, which is happening worldwide. In the mythical tourism that Diario Vasco and others sell us, all these visitors bring an economic benefit to all citizens at the same level, since visitors empty their pockets in San Sebastián. In reality, what is the business of a few, is precariousness, loss of neighborhood identity, massifications and an increase in the price of life for the rest. Airbnb is one of the exponents of this.

The Airbnb Business

Let me explain how Airbnb works. If anyone has an empty house, or an empty room – even if it’s only for a week – they can contact Airbnb and put it in “altruistic” rental. I say “altruistic,” because El País has dubbed the platform as a collaborative economy—along with Uber and others—but this kind of economy has nothing altruistic. These beautiful concepts only make the tourist massification more enjoyable. Yes, it bypasses intermediaries such as hotels and hostels and puts people in direct contact to meet their needs, but the economic logic is eternal: the visitor with money gives money to the owner of the empty room, which gives him his service, in addition to the benefit that Airbnb brings. In short, a perpetual exchange through which money flows. Few “collaborations”.

It should be clear that whoever does business on Airbnb is due to the abundance of resources. Even those in a bad economic situation take advantage of the platform to help them get out of their situation, even if in their impotence they are promoting the mercantilization and gentrification of San Sebastian. But those who really fill their pockets will be those with a lot of resources, because the data of the platform shows us that there are very big imbalances in Airbnb in San Sebastián.

Ten Airbnb users who offer places in San Sebastian offer 1,119 places: 1.4% of users offer a quarter of their beds, according to a study by Hirikilabs and Montera34. The user with the highest number of places, FeelFree Rentals, offers 254 places. It is clear that it is not an ordinary citizen who intends to take out a few sums, but someone who does business making San Sebastian a theme park for tourists. But even if a few get rich with Airbnb, the mass of tourists who come, and the effects that this has, we all suffer.

The presence of so many hotels, hostels, Airbnb and second summer homes in San Sebastián means that it is a fruitful business, always for those with resources. Due to the existence of the business, investment real estate companies such as Engel & Völkers are making offers to buy homes here and there. Similar to what is happening in Barcelona and Venice, tired of crowds of tourists, indebted to pay the prices of shops and bars made to look at the pockets of tourists, suffocated by the low salary of precarious work to the bar, aware that everything has become a showcase for your neighborhood, the neighbor of the Old Town will sell the house to the real estate so that it can continue doing business. Thus, residents with low purchasing power will have to leave the neighborhood and be replaced by those with higher purchasing power. The gentrification.

And it must be said clearly. That's not funny at all.