GRAFFITI telling tourists to ‘f*** off’ has appeared in Malaga just days before fresh anti-Airbnb protests.
A photo of the aggressive message was shared by the Malaga-based Instagram page ‘Guiris Go Home’.
The page often shares photos of tourists or ‘guiris’ checking into Airbnbs or even walking around the city, writing mocking captions alongside them.
‘Guiri’ is a term used by the Spanish to refer to stereotypical tourists or expats from the UK, US or other northern European countries.
It comes just days before nationwide protests calling for ‘an end to the housing racket’.
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Millions of locals will take the streets in Malaga, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Mallorca, Ibiza, Tenerife and elsewhere on April 5.
Many Spaniards, particularly young people, are fed-up of being increasingly priced out of city centres due to rising rents and surging buying costs.
The brunt of the crisis has been blamed on the rise of tourist apartments, which have surged by tens of thousands over the past few years.
The most affected areas are naturally tourist hotspots like Madrid, Sevilla, Malaga, Tenerife, Mallorca, Ibiza, Valencia, Cadiz and elsewhere.
Across these areas, business owners and landlords are turning their properties into short-term holiday lets due to the much higher returns.
But this is stripping supply for local families desperate for long-term accommodation, while those looking to buy are seeing prices reach astronomical heights.
The anger reached new heights in Barcelona last year when locals were filmed spraying tourists with water pistols and telling them to go home.
Many have argued that the tourists are not to blame, when many of the property owners creating tourist flats are in fact Spanish.
But local governments have been forced to act in the face of mammoth protests.
Barcelona announced last year that it will ban ALL of its tourist apartments by 2028. The measure includes retroactively removing licences from all existing holiday flats.
Malaga also announced this week that it will introduce a ‘global moratorium’ on tourist flats, although more details have yet to be revealed.
