Even though 2025 has not been marked by as many protests against overtourism in Spain as the previous year, new data indicates that dissatisfaction among locals with the current tourism model keeps increasing.
The latest edition of the Tourism Perception Barometer by global marketing company LLYC shows that Spaniards’ opinions about tourism in their country has dropped 0.4 point during the third quarter of 2025, now standing at 4.3 out of 10.
Updated quarterly, the report shows that dissatisfaction with tourism has increased by 40 percent since the first survey launched in 2022.
Mass tourism and its impact on housing prices remain the main complaint, dominating discussions on digital platforms.
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Despite a slight improvement compared to the previous quarter, these topics remain the most discussed, followed by security-related concerns, which account for 15 percent of mentions.
“The impact of tourism is especially visible in urbanised regions with high visitor flow,” notes the LLYC study.
Charts by LLYC showing dissatisfaction with tourism among Spaniards in Q3 2025.
Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia are the regions most frequently mentioned in debates online, showing more polarised reactions in these places.
Catalonia is the region where locals have the lowest opinions about tourism in the country (2.8 points). The northeastern autonomous community has seen a 42 percent increase in complaints about security, making it the top concern among its residents. Pickpockets, for example, are often more common in areas with lots of tourists such as Barcelona.
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At the other end of the scale, Extremadura leads the way with 7 points out of ten in the tourism satisfication tables, closely followed by Aragón and Castilla y León, which both have 6.7 points.
In these regions, the preservation of local culture is what’s most appreciated by Spaniards. Respondents also highlight “unique” and less crowded experiences and places in these regions.
It goes without saying that these are vast regions with a lot of untapped potential when it comes to tourism and are under-visited when compared with many others, which goes a long way to explain why overtourism hasn’t become a problem there.
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While most regions in Spain have seen their opinions about tourism decline, the Canary Islands have remained stable at 4.5 points out of Spain, which still counts as a fail however.
In the Atlantic archipelago, the number of messages complaining about mass tourism decreased by 30 percent in the second quarter, the tone has been more positive and less critical, although still insufficient to be considered approving.
In 2024, there were several anti-tourism protests across the Canary Islands, which shows that more still needs to be done there to improve relations between locals and tourists.
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The most notable declines in tourism perception were seen in Galicia, Cantabria, Asturias, and La Rioja, where increased conversations about gentrification, deteriorating local well-being, and overcrowding have negatively influenced people there.
This is perhaps surprising since these regions in northern (or ‘green’) Spain do not receive large numbers of international tourists.
However, they are getting much more popular among Spanish nationals and international holidaymakers trying to escape the intense heat in the rest of the country during Spain’s increasingly long summers.
