Scottish Highlands must learn lessons from Majorcan 'overtourism'

The island of Majorca in Spain and the Scottish Highlands and Western Isles would not seem to have much in common - but an academic from the University of Glasgow argues otherwise.

These locations are hundreds of miles away from each other, with radically different climates and languages.

However, research has shown the impacts of tourism in both Scotland and Spain in the last decade are felt in similar ways by local communities.

Dr Guillem Colom-Montero has been looking at both countries to gauge the impacts of tourism, particularly in the last decade.

Local community associations, particularly in Majorca, have been overly critical of the effects that tourism is having on housing, public services, jobs, landscape, and the environment as well as linguistic and cultural sustainability.

'Unsustainable force'

They see the island being totally overwhelmed by the influx of visitors – Majorca is home to one million residents and receives more than 12 million tourists annually.

Now tourism is being described as a “devastating,” “unsustainable force” by community leaders which is rapidly transforming the island’s environment, landscape, and territory as well as its sociocultural fabric.

Tourism is seen as the main cause of the locals’ inaccessibility to housing due to the rapidly increasing prices both in urban and rural areas as well as of the strain on public services and roads due to overcrowding, in particular during the summer months.

Residents also complain of the working conditions and low salaries offered in the tourism industry and are particularly critical of vacation rentals and the recent boom of residential tourism and second homes, which has led to a housing crisis.

'Overtourism'

Dr Colom-Montero, who lectures at the University of Glasgow, said: “Tourism has triggered such overarching transformations at all social, cultural and economic levels that Majorcans no longer recognise the island, don’t feel they belong and at times even feel expelled.

“Majorcan culture has seen a mushrooming of creative, literary, and cultural responses to overtourism, including fiction, poetry, travelogues, documentary film, drama, political cartooning, and a body of cultural production by grassroots activism.

"These creations represent tourism through narratives and vocabularies of colonialism, invasion, destruction, illness, malaise, and collective trauma.

“This acutely critical perspective suggests a culturally traumatic experience associated to the environmental and sociocultural effects of mass tourism on Majorca.

"It is fascinating to see parallels with Scotland, where communities are also facing similar problems and are now beginning to find their voices against mass-tourism and its impact on their local areas.”

Scottish reactions to tourism

Last year, Dr Colom-Montero started analysing residents’ reactions to tourism in Scotland.

In May 2023, he visited the isle of Barra, where he screened the Majorcan documentary film Overbooking (2019), which revolves around the impacts of mass tourism on the island, in the Barra Learning Centre and Castlebay Community School.

The screenings were followed by a lively debate and, while the intensity was seen as smaller, the responses were quite telling: ‘all these issues ring a bell here,’ while another resident said it now felt like they were living in a ‘theme park.’

Dr Colom-Montero said: “Both Barra and Majorca, the Hebrides, and the Balearics, are remote, fragile island-environments in which rural imaginaries are still very much present in the everyday life experience of the local population.

"The sudden and comprehensive transformations experienced in recent years are felt in dramatic ways in both regions, which share the historical link between landscape, community identity and language, Gaelic in the Hebrides, and Catalan in the Balearics.”

'A cautionary tale'

Gail Anthea Brown, a writer from Caithness who, after watching Overbooking online, said: “There are many parallels in this documentary with feelings around tourism in the Highlands & Islands.

"Majorcan residents' concerns around the impacts of tourism are mirrored across our communities, who have been negatively affected by initiatives such as the North Coast 500, and the increasing portrayal of rural areas as travel destinations rather than places where people live.

"It was particularly interesting to note the documentary's caution around the development of 'alternative' tourism streams, such as slow, immersive, and off-season travel, which, without restriction in other areas, adding up to more unsustainable tourism.

"The Majorcan experience should be a cautionary tale for the Highlands and Islands, where overtourism has all too often left communities feeling powerless and overwhelmed.”

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