Increasing numbers of guided city tours are outraging locals and dodging local regulation in Spanish cities.

This comes amid rising anti-tourism sentiment bubbling across Spain in recent months, with protests against ‘touristification’ and rising rents in major cities including Madrid, Málaga, Mallorca, the Canaries and Granada.

Now locals in Valencia and Barcelona are getting seriously fed up with tour groups, and some would say with good reason. Limits on tour group numbers were recently brought in by local councils in both cities but are seemingly being ignored.

Many Spaniards have for some years now complained that their cities are being transformed into ‘theme parks’ that cater for tourists rather than local people, but the recent launch of a so-called ‘silent disco tour’ in Valencia seems to have proven this point to a laughable (locals would say ridiculous) degree.

READ ALSO: Spain’s Valencia to limit tour group numbers

The Bailaloloco Silent Disco Tour, which offers paying participants the chance to walk (or dance) their way around Valencia’s historic old town while listening to music through headphones, has caused quite a stir in the Mediterranean city.

Although the organising company promotes the tour as an “immersive experience”, many Valencians do not share their enthusiasm and the company has caused outrage in the local press and social media.

One local took to Twitter/X to voice his frustrations: “They have turned cities into a theme park for idiots. Walking around Valencia and finding this bunch of assholes every day. And a company that makes money out of it. The locals, every day they are less and less important.”

Han convertit les ciutats en un parc temàtic per a idiotes. Passejar per València i trobar-te a esta pandilla de gilipolles tots els dies. I una empresa que guanya pasta amb això. Els veïns i les veïnes, cada vegada pinten menys. pic.twitter.com/VOxFFQgqoI

— Miquel Ramos 🥘 (@Miquel_R) August 27, 2024

In Barcelona tour guides are flouting local regulations brought in in 2022 to limit the size of tour groups and number of groups allowed in one place at a time. Guides are still bringing too many groups into tourist areas of the city, something that is causing overcrowding and congestion in the city centre.

For locals in many of Spain’s major cities, they increasingly feel like outsiders and that the city is no longer designed with them in mind.

City council rules state that groups should be limited to 15 people within Barcelona’s Ciutat Vella (old town), and in the city’s other neighbourhoods, where streets are slightly wider and it’s not so crowded, up to 30 people are allowed per group.

READ ALSO: Barcelona to hand out €3,000 fines to tour guides with groups of more than 15

Restrictions on the number of tour groups that can enter certain areas at one time were also introduced. A maximum of eight tour groups are allowed in the central Plaça Sant Jaume at any one time, where the town hall is located, for example, and five groups are permitted to enter the colonnaded Plaça Reial.

According to the regulations no more than two tour guide groups can gather in the Plaça de Sant Felip Neri, yet reporting from El Periódico has revealed that tour companies are breaking these rules. By the Santa Maria del Mar, somewhere where no more than three groups should be at any time, four accompanied groups were spotted, two of them on bikes.

¿Qué os parece esta introducción de una guía turística a sus clientes/turistas al llegar a Barcelona? pic.twitter.com/2ukKkeyzcL

— 🅹🅾🅷🅽 🆂🅼🅸🆃🅷®️ (@DR_JohnSmith_) July 11, 2024

Guided bike tours and huge groups of cruise ship passengers disembarking and piling into city centres are two issues that have been highlighted by Spain’s anti-tourism protests.

“In Sant Felip Neri it happens frequently,” says Anna Carrasco, President of the tourist guide association AGUICAT. She attributes the rule breaking to “groups from outside who come uninformed” about the new regulations. 

“There are infringements because there are groups that come with a guide and are not aware of the limitations. They come by coach with a guide and the agency has not done the work of informing them.”

The rules in the Catalan capital, which were first introduced in 2023 and will extend to 2028, state that tour guides who do not comply with the regulation will face fines of between €1,500 and €3,000.

Other rules which apply to tour groups across the whole city include banning the use of megaphones and making sure that at least 50 percent of the street is left free for others to use.

But if recent events in Valencia and Barcelona are anything to go by, tour guide groups are, whether knowingly or unknowingly, flouting these rules and further contributing to the ‘touristification’ of Spanish cities.

READ ALSO: ‘Out of our neighbourhood!’: Barcelona residents spray water on tourists