There is no Magic in Numbers
It's a sunny day in July. You have the afternoon free and it's warm and just right to head for the beach. You gather everything, towel, sunscreen, bathing suit (a bikini on me would scare off half the beach), that relaxing book you want to reread, get in the car and set its prow to the beach you've been going to for the last ten years because of its shady spots. As you drive down the curving lane that ends at a little spot of paradise, you start to notice cars parked along the ditches. You turn the last curve, and see wall-to-wall cars in every empty spot available, even under the pine trees. Your heart sinks. It's no longer a question of parking in a shady spot, it's a question of parking within half a kilometer. But you finally finagle a spot that would make an acrobat proud to park in and be able to open the door enough to wiggle out. You take your bag and go to find a shady spot. There isn't any. They've all been taken. There's almost no spot even in the sun. The place looks like the opening of the bridal gown sales at Filene's Basement, two minutes before opening time. You think you should have worn that bikini. You go home and sit under the leafy grape arbor with your relaxing book, your only company the dog and the cats. Peace.
It's early August. You decide you want to visit a certain bookstore in Santiago where they sell books in English, to see if there are any new authors that are worth the time. As you visit, you also decide to go into the old section of town, that feels so comfortable and familiar. You head for the parking garage at the merging of the old town and the new, with everything close to hand. You can't get in. The line of cars waiting for an empty spot to open up goes all around the square, and a cop has come to wave off any that want to join the line, in the interest of keeping the traffic moving. Which is difficult because the cars seem to have multiplied by fifteen. You go to another parking garage in the new town, farther from where you want to go, but this one still has a couple of empty spaces. You park and go upstairs to the street. There are people all around the square and up the streets. You wonder if there's a concert or something else, but you don't see any publicity. You walk up the streets to the old section. When you cross the last street and enter along where there was a gate two hundred years ago, you think you've made a mistake and headed for the Benidorm Festival, Rock in Rio, or Coachella. Moving along the pedestrian street is alarmingly difficult. As you head toward the cathedral it becomes even worse, as pilgrims with their camping gear on their backs struggle through the crowds. You notice that many of the old stores have closed and souvenir shops have opened with their cheap witches, pilgrim's sticks, and scallop shells (are there that many scallops in the ocean?). You hear about seven different languages around you, none of them Spanish, even less Galician. You turn around as best you can. You're out of here. The new book can wait for autumn.
While summer still hasn't quite gotten so bad, it's well on its way to doing so. The tourist invasion every year is increasing. Last year we had over five million visitors. This year, the Xunta, the regional government, wants that number to increase to six million. This, in a community of just over two and a half million inhabitants. In today's online paper it says that the tourist industry generates eleven percent of the region's income and over a hundred eight thousand jobs. But there's a couple of caveats to that. To begin, it's mostly in the summer, with its peak in July and August. Many places hire only in the months of July, August, and September. A few others start in June. Then there are those that hire only for the month in which Holy Week falls. The rest of the year there's very little movement in the jobs area of tourism.
The other caveat is massification. It's being felt all along the Mediterranean, especially in Barcelona and the Balearic Islands. In Barcelona, lifetime residents of the center of town are being priced out of their homes by the creation of rental apartments for tourists, smartly priced hotels in small townhouses, and the pensions intended for those who come to drink themselves into a coma while they rip up the cobblestones at the same time. In the island of Ibiza, workers in the tourist industry find themselves living in empty apartments they had to break into, their cars, or renting a couch for seven hundred euros a month, while they earn a little over a thousand. Massive tourism has become the bane of the islands.
The problem is that too many people have been scared away from other destinations because of the irrational fear of terrorism. While terrorist attacks are frightening, and the number of dead sometimes overwhelming, there have been more deaths from car accidents in Europe than from terrorist attacks. In that sense, Spain is not safer. Almost six hundred people have died so far this year in accidents. None have died in terror attacks. Does that make Spain safer? No, it's just as safe as other countries, France and Britain included.
Please, do visit, just don't visit all together in the months of July and August. Come in October, come in April. If you like cool rainy weather, come in December and January. But don't come only because it seems a safe destination. Read up a bit and come to visit those places that are magical and better understood by knowing something about their background. Just not at the same time as five thousand other visitors. The magic tends to get lost that way.
It's early August. You decide you want to visit a certain bookstore in Santiago where they sell books in English, to see if there are any new authors that are worth the time. As you visit, you also decide to go into the old section of town, that feels so comfortable and familiar. You head for the parking garage at the merging of the old town and the new, with everything close to hand. You can't get in. The line of cars waiting for an empty spot to open up goes all around the square, and a cop has come to wave off any that want to join the line, in the interest of keeping the traffic moving. Which is difficult because the cars seem to have multiplied by fifteen. You go to another parking garage in the new town, farther from where you want to go, but this one still has a couple of empty spaces. You park and go upstairs to the street. There are people all around the square and up the streets. You wonder if there's a concert or something else, but you don't see any publicity. You walk up the streets to the old section. When you cross the last street and enter along where there was a gate two hundred years ago, you think you've made a mistake and headed for the Benidorm Festival, Rock in Rio, or Coachella. Moving along the pedestrian street is alarmingly difficult. As you head toward the cathedral it becomes even worse, as pilgrims with their camping gear on their backs struggle through the crowds. You notice that many of the old stores have closed and souvenir shops have opened with their cheap witches, pilgrim's sticks, and scallop shells (are there that many scallops in the ocean?). You hear about seven different languages around you, none of them Spanish, even less Galician. You turn around as best you can. You're out of here. The new book can wait for autumn.
While summer still hasn't quite gotten so bad, it's well on its way to doing so. The tourist invasion every year is increasing. Last year we had over five million visitors. This year, the Xunta, the regional government, wants that number to increase to six million. This, in a community of just over two and a half million inhabitants. In today's online paper it says that the tourist industry generates eleven percent of the region's income and over a hundred eight thousand jobs. But there's a couple of caveats to that. To begin, it's mostly in the summer, with its peak in July and August. Many places hire only in the months of July, August, and September. A few others start in June. Then there are those that hire only for the month in which Holy Week falls. The rest of the year there's very little movement in the jobs area of tourism.
The other caveat is massification. It's being felt all along the Mediterranean, especially in Barcelona and the Balearic Islands. In Barcelona, lifetime residents of the center of town are being priced out of their homes by the creation of rental apartments for tourists, smartly priced hotels in small townhouses, and the pensions intended for those who come to drink themselves into a coma while they rip up the cobblestones at the same time. In the island of Ibiza, workers in the tourist industry find themselves living in empty apartments they had to break into, their cars, or renting a couch for seven hundred euros a month, while they earn a little over a thousand. Massive tourism has become the bane of the islands.
The problem is that too many people have been scared away from other destinations because of the irrational fear of terrorism. While terrorist attacks are frightening, and the number of dead sometimes overwhelming, there have been more deaths from car accidents in Europe than from terrorist attacks. In that sense, Spain is not safer. Almost six hundred people have died so far this year in accidents. None have died in terror attacks. Does that make Spain safer? No, it's just as safe as other countries, France and Britain included.
Please, do visit, just don't visit all together in the months of July and August. Come in October, come in April. If you like cool rainy weather, come in December and January. But don't come only because it seems a safe destination. Read up a bit and come to visit those places that are magical and better understood by knowing something about their background. Just not at the same time as five thousand other visitors. The magic tends to get lost that way.
It is the same in Argelès. If it weren't for all the friends that come during July and August we would head for Geneva.
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