Comments on: The Catalan Tourist Board: Guerrilla division

By: anna

anna — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:30:47 +0000

The very best one I saw in Barcelona a couple of years ago: “If it’s called ‘tourist season’, why can’t we shoot them?”

By: babyeinstein

babyeinstein — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 23:35:00 +0000

good lord i had to get 26 comments in before somebody FINALLY said that. thank you.

By: The Elf

The Elf — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:21:29 +0000

And tourism!

By: Marina

Marina — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:05:51 +0000

So if you someone is being rude with you:

a) he is plain rude
b) maybe you are the one being rude

In both cases it is probably an exception. That applys to any tourist destination. First time I was in London I was on a trip with fellow students from an English school in Hastings. There where Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Brazilians, Frenchs, Germans and Mexicans. One of them stand on the left of the escalator and was loudly amonested by locals. He thought locals were rude whereas locals thought he was the one being rude.

By: Marina

Marina — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:47:15 +0000

I’m from Barcelona and I have to say that there are tourists … and there are tourists. There is a lot of people that when going to a foreign country they suddenly forget their manners … There are tourists that spend all their vacations getting drunk and pissing on the street … obviously NOT ALL tourists do that. There are locals who are rude, obviously NOT ALL locals are rude. In fact MOST of them (tourists/locals) does not but you know, people always remebers the bad exception…
I’m going to tell you one “terror” story about tourists. A saturday when I was going back home from a party late at night I found an English tourist pissing on the metro platform (and I mean ON the metro platform not even from the metro platfom at the rails …). I’ve been severals times to London and I never ever have seen anyone doing that nor I think all English tourists decide to piss on metro platforms all over the world. But yet it happend and somehow if I tell you that you can get the impression that that is what always happens.

I’ve got a friend that lived in the city center in a shared flat with other fellow university students. It was very close to their university. Three years ago the owner decided that he could get more money renting the flat for days to tourists and increased their rent x3. They had to shearch something else far away from the university. It wasn’t a big deal because they were students. But what about if they had been a family living there for all their life?

By: Marina

Marina — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:11:47 +0000

Really people do belive such stupid things ……. “to the point that Barca’s football players used to toss one-peseta coins at players of other teams before matches, as if tossing a coin to a beggar” …………
And, yes Catalonia has been a soverign country do your homework better.

By: Marina

Marina — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:06:51 +0000

I’m from Barcelona and you really shouldn’t belive all that stupid things they tell you on spanish media …. And yes we now want to break off form Spain but is mainly for the HUGE hate from Spaniards towards Catalans and not the other way around. I often travel to Mardid and Zaragoza for business and I am really amazed of the stupid hateful things people belive about us … like YOU: “Speaking Spanish as a tourist in Barcelona doesn’t really help much, since they refuse to speak it themselves…”????? Do you truly belive it? xD Oh, God ….

By: sarah

sarah — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:36:14 +0000

I lived in Tarragona, just south of Barca, and when I had been there about 3 or 4 months I went into a bakery and ordered a sandwich in Spanish. She asked in Catalan why I wasn’t speaking Catalan so I said ‘I have been here only 3 months and I am learning Spanish.’ to which she rolled her eyes and walked away. Not everyone is like this, but no, it’s not easy!

By: sarah

sarah — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:33:10 +0000

I do feel a little for their plight…..But personally I don’t know how Barca aren’t doing better at seeming like a crappy tourist destination. You could go to Madrid which [in my humblest of opinions] looks nicer and the people are infinitely friendlier. Or other parts of Spain which are just as beautiful and much less expensive. You probably won’t be robbed by light-fingered Catalans either, result!

By: Biff

Biff — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 05:17:45 +0000

Balabusta in Blue Jeans is totally right about tourists in general. Want to see European sh!t heels acting like the obnoxious jerks they claim to despise? Go to Thailand. You’ll see European buffoonery on parade like spring break in Cancun but with more child rape.

By: asp

asp — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 23:46:17 +0000

johnny, can’t speak for everyone, but I was treated like gold in sevilla and granada. two of my favorite places in the world.

By: Balabusta in Blue Jeans

Balabusta in Blue Jeans — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:18:29 +0000

I think that Europeans tend not to know or care how other Europeans behave when abroad. That is to say, they act just like tourists–loud, obnoxious, entitled, naive, critical of local customs, and desperately needy. It’s not a uniquely American phenomenon, by any means. It’s just more of a PITA when it’s in your town.

I try to behave well and blend in when travelling, but I am also not going to go around apologizing for Fred and Marge from Tucson, who always seem to be a step ahead of me, doing something atrocious. (Look, Marge didn’t know about the electrical current, and she didn’t plan to short out half of Rome. We’re sorry.)

That said, I’ve had relatively little trouble with anti-American sentiment anywhere. People are generally nice.

By: Julie Sheridan

Julie Sheridan — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 10:14:48 +0000

I’ve been living in Barcelona for a year now, and I’ve never seen signs like this anywhere. But it is really hard here as an outsider (and I work full time for a Spanish company, speaking Spanish all day). The problem isn’t so much my white skin, blue eyes and red hair making me a target as an obvious tourist, but more that when I do mix with locals, they’re pissed off I’m here speaking Castilian and not Catalan. Barca as a foreigner ain’t easy!

By: redheadwglasses

redheadwglasses — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:25:15 +0000

I was in Taiwan for two weeks and the Taiwanese people were wonderful, helpful, charming, curious.