Anti-tourist protesters on the Spanish island of Menorca have staged a demonstration blocking access to one of the island’s most stunning beaches.
Around 250 locals, acting as part of the Via Menorca campaign, descended on the picture-perfect sands of Cala Turqueta this weekend and filled the car park and beach.
After taking over the cove, the Spanish then arranged themselves to spell out the words “SOS Menorca” for an aerial photograph which the group shared on social media channels.
Via Menorca, which is run by The Balearic Group of Ornithology and Defense of the Nature of Menorca (GOB Menorca), said on their website that the disruption was not “against tourism”, but was directed at “mass tourism model”.
In a statement they said: “From early in the morning, a group of 250 people coordinated to meet in the parking lot and fill it with resident cars for about six hours.
“The meeting continued on the beach to make several messages on the sand with the help of towels and the bodies of the same people.”
GOB Menorca said it wanted to “transmit to the outside world” concerns of a “large part of the Menorcan population”.
It added: “Today, from Cala en Turqueta, another route through Menorca has been claimed, to curb increasing tourist pressure and to demand the right to a home, to safeguard our water resources, and to diversify the economy and that the young people who have left Menorca to train can return to the island and find a decent way to live there.
“Today we remember the mobilisations that made it possible to save this beach, because without memory you cannot anticipate the future and process the precise departures. And as a response, we imagine and organise a change of course for Menorca.”
In an onimous sign for British tourists, the protesters said their action was part of a wider movement linked to similar demonstrations elsehwere in the Balearic Islands, and in the Canary Islands, Malaga and Barcelona.
Last week more than 20,000 took to the streets of Palma, the capital of Majorca, again in a backlash against visitors coming to the island for their holidays.
Organisers of the sizeable gathering claimed it was actually 50,000 people who took part in the protest, but local police more than halved those estimates.
Among the demands of the Via Menorca campaign, it is asking for tourist taxes to be “increased significantly in July and August” and for “effective control of irregular tourist rental homes”.