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The Spanish Eye > Costa del Sol > ‘Vandalise them!’: Anti-tourism activist in Malaga admits to sabotaging Airbnb lockboxes and encourages locals to do the same
Costa del SolNews

‘Vandalise them!’: Anti-tourism activist in Malaga admits to sabotaging Airbnb lockboxes and encourages locals to do the same

Last updated: April 4, 2025 11:11 am
Laurence Dollimore
Published: April 4, 2025
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AN anti-tourism protester in Malaga is sabotaging lockboxes in a bid to stop people accessing their holiday apartments.

The creator behind the GuirisGoHome page shared an article about tourist flats to their followers.

It stated how the Plaza de la Merded in Malaga city was the most saturated in Europe in terms of holiday apartments.

The GuirisGoHome page wrote in a caption: ‘Please vandalise all the lockboxes that you see! Superglue them! I am doing the same in my street.’

They then shared a screenshot of a message from a critic, who accused them of ‘wasting their time’ before telling them to ‘get lost’.

The activist replied: ‘I don’t waste any time, I do it while walking to work and coming home… the guiris and landlords will get lost when they come back and find they cannot collect their keys.’

The GuirisGoHome page wrote in a caption: ‘Please vandalise all the lockboxes that you see! Superglue them! I am doing the same in my street.’

It comes as potentially millions of Spaniards are set to take to the streets this weekend to protest against ‘the housing racket’.

Demonstrations are scheduled for Malaga, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Mallorca, Ibiza, Tenerife and a host of other major cities across the country on April 5 (Saturday).

Many Spaniards, particularly young people, say they 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.

The cities where protests will take place, alongside their starting times and locations

In many cities, business owners and landlords are turning their properties into short-term holiday lets due to the much higher returns.

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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 recently announced that it will introduce a ‘global moratorium’ on tourist flats, although more details have yet to be revealed.

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ByLaurence Dollimore
Laurence Dollimore has been covering news in Spain for almost a decade. The London-born expat is NCTJ-trained and has a Gold Star Diploma in Multimedia Journalism from the prestigious News Associates. Laurence has reported from Spain for some of the UK's biggest titles, including MailOnline, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Sun and the Sun Online. He also has a Master's Degree in International Relations from Queen Mary University London.
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