Spain tourism: Why Spanish people are fighting back

If you can elbow your way onto one of Majorca’s sunspots this summer, you will witness two unstoppable forces.

The first, as old as time, the tide of the Balearic Sea, methodically erasing the day’s lovingly crafted sandcastles.

The second, a more modern phenomenon, the tsunami of tourism threatening to consume all in its path.

Every inch of beach is taken. Finding a parking space is like striking gold.

If you leave your sunbed for too long, your possessions are unceremoniously turfed to make space for the long queue of would-be usurpers.

All these are the signs of a bonanza that’s seen and heard across the island, not least in the incessant beeping of contactless payment machines ringing out from the teeming hotels, restaurants and bars.

A chorus of commerce powered by record numbers of visitors.

But if this is a tale of colossal wealth being showered onto a business-savvy Spanish community, Sonia Ruiz certainty has not shared any of it.

We meet the mother of one, 31, in a park a few hundred metres from the shore in the capital, Palma.

Her four-year-old son Luca negotiates the various playground slides with no apparent concern.

But Sonia is really struggling. Her landlord has asked them to leave and she says finding a new place is impossible.

“Every day I’m looking and every day the rent is higher,” she says.

“I even stop people in the street and ask if they have something because the day is approaching when I will have to leave the apartment, and I just see me and my son homeless because there is absolutely nothing.”

Sonia and her partner are separated but have been forced to live together because individually they cannot afford the cost of rent, despite taking home 2,400 euros a month between them.

“They ask you for deposits of several months. Some have even told me that they don’t want children, they don’t want animals. And so many people are looking.”