Off to Seville!

I’m heading to Seville next week. My late father said it was the most beautiful city he’d ever seen, so it’s been on my travel list for many years. It will be a special mother-daughter trip. (I’m the mother, in case you wondered.) Maybe, for a few days, we can put wars and US elections and UK budget concerns on the back burner. I know these issues will flare up in scorching reality on our return home, but perhaps we’ll be able to cope with them better after a little cultural reset. A little R & R. A little …

What’s that? Anti-tourist protests all over Spain? Barcelona? Tenerife? Alicante? Oh, look! Protests are scheduled for Seville in November. Water pistoling visitors. Jamming locks to short-term rental accommodations. Surrounding visitors with flags and anti-tourist banners.

Wonderful. There goes our R & R.

Touristification

But I understand the concerns. ‘Touristification’ worldwide has proven a blessing and a curse. From the Venetian Lagoon to the summit of Everest, from The Great Wall of China to The Great Barrier Reef, too many visitors can destroy the location. Too few visitors can destroy the economy on which many locals are reliant. How do we identify and address the balance?

This anti-tourist initiative is not confined to Spain. It is a global undertaking, born of so many people able to indulge in the luxuries of holidays while others struggle for basic accommodation. I get it. Sometimes you just want your home territory to be yours alone, as I do when I come across a party of hikers on a trail I consider inherently (and incorrectly) my own. Yet at the same time you acknowledge your home territory needs that influx of visitors to survive.

Tourists on Exmoor

When you live in a tourist destination, as I do, the pros and cons of tourism are all part of living there. Exmoor National Park is a splendid place for a getaway. Gorgeous coastline. Rugged moorland. Wooded bridlepaths. Quaint villages. Peaceful bays. It’s all the things a good holiday should be.  Therefore, people visit Exmoor from all over the world. They fill the parking spots and congest the narrow lanes. They stay in short-term rentals that used to house local families. And they take that last table reservation at the restaurant where you yourself had hoped to dine on Friday evening.

I get it. Trips to the grocery store must be planned to avoid change-over day at the local holiday resort. Some of the more popular spots during summer holidays or school half terms may be off limits to avoid traffic. That said, I respect the need for visitors, admittedly with grumbles every now and then. But should I ever find myself going beyond a minor grumble towards scowling or complaining I remember something…

The shopkeepers. Pub owners. Wait staff. Hotel owners. Coach drivers, and ice cream vendors, and entertainers, and tour operators, and souvenir sellers, and museum directors, and …

I remember them because they are my friends and neighbours. They are the ones I spend my winters with when the restaurant is only a quarter full. The ones sending their children to the local school, filling the little recreation park, keeping my touristy village the vibrant and well-rounded place it is to live. So many who live here are reliant on global travel. So, what do we do? Tell everyone to come? Or tell everyone to stay away?

The UNESCO Connection

I cannot fix the housing crisis or fix the have and the have nots. I can only buy into the UNESCO mission statement to ‘contribute to the building of a culture of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information.’ Seville has three UNESCO sites. I want to learn about them. Experience them. We must know people and places in order to care about people and places.

Disturbingly, the world is currently showing us in awful detail what happens when we view everyone as strangers, as dangerous, as others. As potential takers rather than potential givers.

I’ve only previously spent one day in Spain; a childhood daytrip on the ferry from Portugal. I still have the tiny orange, dotted, ruffled Spanish dress my parents purchased as a souvenir. My daughter wore it when she turned six. She and I share that common interest in the origins of the dress and look forward to learning more about it.

Tracey Gemmell’s childhood Spanish dress

The Tourist Dilemma

But it seems we must prepare to be targeted as undesirable tourists. We aren’t staying in a short-term rental in Seville. We’re staying in a small hotel, run by a family who no doubt has concerns their livelihood risks cancelation this year and next year and every other year if visitors avoid Spain. Tourism accounts for a large chuck of the Spanish economy, as it does many other countries. Where’s the balance? What is my part in that balance?

My trip is booked and paid for. I will go, with fingers crossed I get to absorb the splendours of Seville in peace. Without getting doused by water pistols or abused verbally. In return for a little R & R, I promise Seville this: I will act respectfully in your UNESCO cathedral and marvel at the Alcázar, and the Archivo de Indias. I will learn from you, personally, what your UNESCO sites mean to you. Learn about your wines and your flamenco and your tapis. And when I leave, I will take with me a clearer understanding of who you are.

I hope, one day, to return your hospitality, to welcome you to Exmoor. I’ll show you why our Exmoor ponies are so special and deserve protecting. Introduce you to Lorna Doone, Samual Colridge and Ada Lovelace and so many others, fictional and real, who travelled here in their quests for knowledge and understanding of the world around them. And I promise not to complain if you get the last table at the restaurant.

Bienvenida

There is no doubt we need to care more about every corner of the world and every person in it. We won’t learn the important stuff from the chaos fed to us in spades through our digital devices and TVs. But as we travel, let’s not lose sight of the goal: to respect and learn. We are not guests solely to litter, drink, deplete resources, take rather than give. We don’t travel in order to find the same food or brand of beer we prefer at home. We owe it to our hosts to sample their foods, their beers, their cultural norms.

I hope for a warm bienvenida in Spain. But if not, I hope we can part with a better understanding of each other. It’s up to each country, region, city, and village to determine the number of tourists needed to support locals without damaging locales. To help them do that, I need to be the kind of visitor locals are happy to see, rather than inspired to reject.

Images: Seville: Wikimedia Commons

Exmoor: Shaun Davey on Flickr. Shaun takes the most amazing photos of Exmoor. If you’d like to see more of his work, follow him on Flickr or on Instagram