In May, 1967 a skinny, pale junior schoolboy from a rural market town celebrated his seventh birthday with his parents. Not at home under the big skies of East Anglia, but in Malgrat de Mar, a beach resort near Barcelona. His Liverpudlian parents had left the city in 1959 to seek better work opportunities in the East of England and, in the heady days of the late 1960s, they had upgraded the family home from a modest council house to a mortgaged three-bedroom semi.
Holidays were getting an upgrade too – from a caravan in Great Yarmouth or Clacton to joining the first, joyful wave of Britons heading to the sun-drenched Spanish costas. Foreign holidays were, literally, taking off in the booming late 60s and the boy with wavy brown hair was beyond excited about his first trip on a plane and staying in a hotel with a swimming pool, a newly-acquired red and white lilo and a seemingly limitless supply of chilled chocolate milk. His parents opted for chilled drinks that were certainly not chocolate milk.
The boy was me and, with my parents now sadly departed to the Great Sunlounger in the Sky, I cannot verify the price of the holiday or the name of the beachfront hotel. But I am fairly sure it was with the now-defunct Clarksons Travel Group and we flew from Luton with either Court Line or Dan Air (known fondly as Dan Dare, after the science fiction hero from the Eagle comic).
It was a fabulous week: endless hours on the lilo in the pool, a matador poster birthday present from the holiday rep (a charming young German woman; Ingrid?) and there was a train line by the beach and I was obsessed by the expresses hurtling past the sands. Dad also took me to Barcelona FC’s Nou Camp stadium and said it was impressive but Anfield’s Kop was far more atmospheric. He was a wise man.
And, in 1967, Spain was still under the dictatorship of Generalissimo Franco and his cohorts of stern machine-gun-toting military-style Guardia Civil police with their curious Tricornio leather hats. A source of considerable fascination for me (from a safe distance).
Was it exciting being in the vanguard of British tourism to Spain? Absolutely, I was regaling my school pals with tales of Spain (mostly the wonders of chocolate milk and speeding trains by the beach) for days when I got back to Miss Frost’s class.
Miss Frost, as I recall, would probably frighten a Guardia Civil policeman, since she terrified a class of seven year olds! So, fast forward five decades or so to just before the pandemic.
The schoolboy is now in his late 50s, certainly not skinny and unencumbered by wavy brown hair. And I am on a Mediterranean cruise with my wife Debbie, with the ship calling next at gorgeous Santorini in Greece’s Cyclades islands.
It should have been one of the highlights of the week-long voyage. It turned out to be an overtourism Hades.
There were at least five medium size cruise ships anchored in the caldera, disgorging thousands of passengers by tenders to the small harbour below clifftop Insta-fave Fira.
The queue for the cable car ride up was a tedious hour or so. Then we emerged into the insanity of Fira itself. Jam-packed does not cover it adequately; it was a seething morass of sweating humanity shuffling through the narrow streets, bumping into each other.
Shops, cafes, bars, streets, churches…all rammed. Truly awful. Debbie and I agreed this was not something to be part of and there were simply way too many cruise passengers visiting in a day. We bailed.
Cable car queue our of Hades dodged, a slippery walk down the donkey poo-slimed cobbles of the Karavolades Stairs brought us to a tender and a retreat to the ship. Never again, we said. Something needs to be done.
And Santorini has acted. Measures to relieve the overtourism pressures include a levy and daily limit on the number of cruise passengers and restrictions on the number of ships allowed to visit. Other ports such as Nice, Amsterdam and Venice have also enforced restrictions and Juneau in Alaska is looking at options.
Spain has been at the forefront of overtourism protests by locals and cruise limits are in place in Barcelona and Palma, Majorca.
This is not just about cruise passengers though, there are much wider issues of mass tourism and the impact it can have on a community – and of course the huge amount of valuable income it can generate.
Billions poured into economies and hundreds of thousands of jobs are not to be ignored, just as the grievances of locals in Spain, Greece and Italy are not to be ignored either. A very tricky issue to balance out.
Indeed, the problem is much closer to home, too, with concerns in holiday hotspots Norfolk and Cornwall that tourist towns are choked in high season and being ‘hollowed out’ with the rise of second homes and short-term rentals such as Airbnb making it harder for locals to get on the property ladder.
So what can be done? There is no easy sticking plaster for a complicated and emotive problem, though restricting cruise ship access does seem reasonably simple and effective.
Nightly tourist taxes? More and more common but I think they just grift a few quid for the local council and determined travellers shrug their shoulders, pay up and turn up.
Quotas? Not sure how that can be implemented with freedom of movement. How can you stop someone getting on a plane to Barcelona or Tenerife?
Avoid the traditional hotspots and discover new, lesser-visited places? This seems to have potential to spread the load around and enjoy exploring fresh destinations. Might just be a bit cheaper too.
Go in less-crowded low/shoulder-season? Again, it may spread the load, share revenue around the months and again may save you a few quid.
Stay at home? Britons love a holiday, it’s not alway sunny here. Good luck with that.