The official signage in Barcelona encourages everyone to enjoy the city, but graffiti dotted around Spain's second biggest city has a different message aimed squarely at visitors.
In English, it says: "Tourists go home."
It's a sentiment that sums up the summer for thousands of Spanish locals who have had enough of the visitors swamping their towns.
From the mainland to the idyllic islands of the Spanish coast, mass protests have broken out against what locals call "mass tourism".
They say the huge number of summer holiday-makers are overwhelming their neighbourhoods, pushing up the price of housing and forcing them out.
In Barcelona, humble water pistol has become a symbol of their resistance and images from some rallies, of locals spraying tourists, have gone viral.
But the crowds keep coming.
Spain is expecting a record 100 million international travellers this year, which puts it on track to overtake France as the world's most visited country.
Foreign Correspondent went to some of Spain's tourism hotspots to meet the locals who say their home is being loved to death.
'We are being forgotten'
Tourism is a big economic driver for Spain. It's the country's main source of income and employs 3 million people.
But those who make a living from tourism have told Foreign Correspondent that tourism can make it hard to live.
Alicia Bocuñano, a taxi driver on Spain's famous party island Ibiza, says despite working 12-hour shifts sometimes seven days a week she's struggled to find housing.
"Everything you are seeing, all these buildings and all these apartments, are for tourists," Alicia explains as we drive around her island home.
Ibiza is experiencing a profound housing shortage, exacerbated by a post pandemic tourism boom and a growing number of apartments being converted to holiday lets, such as Airbnb listings.
Many locals now say they are priced out.
When Alicia went looking for a rental apartment for her and her 11-year-old son Raul, she was blindsided by a demand to pay six months' rent up-front.
"The problem is that I can't pay the 14,000 euro deposit. After having worked so much, for so many hours and for so many years, I feel powerless," she said.
Makeshift camps have been popping up across the island and many of the residents are workers.
Alicia has ended up living in one of them, but she has sent her son to stay with relatives.
"It's very difficult, this, but I am very strong. I will continue to fight and I will continue giving my best for my son and for myself," she said.
"My message to tourists is simply that they should see the reality that is happening here, they should know that while they are being welcomed here we are being forgotten."
The authorities on Ibiza say they have begun regulating and reducing holiday apartment listings to free up housing for locals, but the people Foreign Correspondent spoke to said they're yet to see homes become available.
Higher paid essential workers such as nurses, police officers and teachers say they can't find housing on Ibiza either.
High school teacher Juanjo Bonnin, 58, shares an apartment with two other teachers because none of them can afford a place of their own.
"We civil servants have a good salary ... a liveable wage, [yet] here and now there is no housing that teachers can afford," Juanjo said.
"On Ibiza, we have jobs but no one wants to come here, not police officers, judges, doctors, nurses or teachers because the prices are outrageous."
Spain's housing crisis
In Barcelona, neighbours living alongside one of the main tourist attractions, Park Güell, are so fed up with the large volume of tourists in the area, they have begun staging weekly blockades at the road leading up to the park.
"The feeling of being in a place constantly overcrowded with tourists is suffocating and stressful," said Barcelona local Eva Vilaseca.
"And it ends up generating anger, frustration and this kind of visceral hatred towards tourists."
Eva has been going to the Park Güell blockades, as well as the larger protests, with her four-year-old son Jan, because she's worried they will have to move away.
"The rent prices in Barcelona are reaching astronomical levels," Eva said.
"I'm a single mother, I live alone with my child in Barcelona, and I'm very afraid because my lease has to be renewed next year and I want to be able to continue living in my neighbourhood.
"If they raise the rent, aside from not being able to afford it, I won't just have to leave my neighbourhood, which means taking my child out of his school, but I'll have to leave Barcelona entirely."
To address the housing shortage, Barcelona City Council has come up with a controversial plan to ban all short-term holiday apartments by 2028.
It claims this will free up 10,000 homes for local people.
"We believe we have to try to do several measures in order to improve the [availability of] housing," Deputy Mayor Jordi Valls told Foreign Correspondent.
"First production, then more land, incentivise the private sector to invest in social housing and affordable housing, and the other is banning tourist apartments.
"Tourists are welcome in the city but the tourists have to understand we have to manage this situation … and the only way to control the tourists is to control the offer, because probably the demand is unstoppable."
Some apartment owners are taking legal action because they believe they have been unfairly targeted.
Airbnb told Foreign Correspondent it believes it has been made a "scapegoat".
"Barcelona has made short-term rentals and Airbnb, I believe a very convenient excuse for some of the problems that they have in the city," Airbnb's director general for Spain Jaime Rodríguez de Santiago said.
"The reality, if you look at the numbers, is that eight out of 10 tourists in Barcelona don't stay in short-term rentals, they stay in hotels.
"But obviously there's been a storytelling unfolding around this narrative of whether short-term rentals are the culprit for the over tourism issue."
The destruction of natural places
Housing isn't the only concern for locals who are angry about mass tourism.
They say the huge influx of visitors is also putting enormous pressure on infrastructure such as health, transport, waste and water systems.
Protests have been held about damage to the natural environment too.
Laura San Miguel, an environmental activist who was born and raised on Ibiza, thinks most visitors don't appreciate the island's beauty.
"I think we're very lucky we've got beautiful beaches, coves, cliffs, beautiful seaside and it is very forested," she said.
"[But] it's so very crowded and there is a steady deterioration of natural places.
"In the busiest days of the summer, we more than double the population of the island in one single day and that is many, many days consecutive."
A big concern for Laura is the growing number of yachts dropping anchor along the coast, damaging marine life in Ibiza's crystal-clear waters.
Few realise just below the surface is one of the largest meadows of the sea grass posidonia in the world, which is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site.
"When they pull out the anchor they pull the sea grass with it, so we are finding that it's dying off in many places because of this. It's not replacing itself fast enough," Laura said.
She still thinks tourism is good for Ibiza's economy but believes there should be limits.
"We are not against tourism, we recognise it as an important thing and we are open and happy to have tourism. But why not put a top, a maximum of tourists in a season?"
In a statement, the Spanish government said it did not believe the country had a problem with mass tourism, and it was not considering introducing any caps on numbers.
"The tourism sector is one of the most important sectors for the Spanish economy and one of its main drivers of growth, especially after the pandemic," the statement said.
What can tourists expect in Spain?
Most visitors Foreign Correspondent spoke to were conscious of the anti-tourism backlash but hadn't had any unpleasant encounters with angry locals during their stay.
"I heard about the protests before we came … but we love this country and we bring income to this country and we add to their GDP," said one tourist from China.
"We don't see any antagonism as much as you hear about," said another from North America. "I mean, we see the graffiti, but that's part of the charm of the town, I think."
Aleix Fors Laguna, an e-bike tour guide in Barcelona, often jokes with his friends that he "works for the enemy".
But he doesn't believe tourists are to blame, rather politicians who are not managing the flow of visitors effectively.
Even so, there are things tourists could do to be better guests.
"First, learn a bit of Spanish and Catalan so that we know we are interested in our language, and second, buy in local places," he said.
He added that he would never support spraying water pistols at tourists, or shouting at them to "go home", but he understood why many of the city's residents felt that way.
"We are not your playground, we are a city like yours. A city with workers, with people enjoying their time off, and it of course gets difficult if there are so many people," he said.
"But we have plenty of culture to share with you and we are pleased to do that. As long as you're willing to respect it."
Watch Spain's Toxic Tourism on Foreign Correspondent tonight at 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
