Malaga risks being a victim of his own tourist success. So your City Council already warns: it is reaching the limit

There are times when one figure says more than a thousand words, and in the case of Malaga tourism it seems to be fulfilled: last summer the hotels of the city welcomed some 418,000 travelerswell above 132,700 scored during the same months of 2005. And that is only what the INE records in its Hotel survey. What does that boom suppose for the municipality? Recently (in A report not thought to transcend the media) the City Council valued it with words of an unusual rotundity.

He even suggests his concern.

Black on white. Thus, frankly and without hairs on the tongue, it is how the City of Malaga has pronounced on the city’s tourist boom in A report Posted a few weeks ago. It is not frequent that this kind of documents, technical, usually arid and that they are part of the ‘internal cuisine’ of the local bureaucracy, become news. If he has done it, it is because of his tone.

Malaga, “saturated”. That tourism has reached such a level of massification in Malaga that it begins to generate tensions is no novelty. In summer thousands of neighbors They went out To protest the saturation of the city, a problem that has aroused interest of the foreign press and Boarding the debate political. What is not as usual is that the Consistory exposes a scenario as stark as the Technical Report which he elaborated at the end of 2024.

In it the local administration admits That Malaga “is experiencing unprecedented tourist saturation levels”, especially in the historic center, and warns: “This phenomenon causes certain areas to exceed its load capacity, negatively affecting both residents and visitors.” As if that were not enough, the document recalls that the massification of certain specific areas “congestion”, reduces the quality of life of residents and visitors themselves and affects the local economy.

The other tourism invoice. “Tourism pressure can cause the expulsion of native business and added value, being replaced by souvenir stores and other shops oriented exclusively to tourists,” Add the text. “The increase in tourists promotes the appearance of illegal or low quality accommodations, affecting both the safety of visitors and the image of the city.”

The document is included in The documentation of a public tender with which the City Council seeks precisely to “de -stationalize” the tourism of Malaga. And since it was signed, at the end of November 2024, it has caught the attention of both Andalusian media as of rest of Spain. Such has been its scope that the mayor of the city, Francisco de la Torre (PP), has had to clarify its content.

Saturated, but only sometimes. A few days ago the councilor wanted to remove iron from the document from his own City Council clarifying that, In his opiniontourist saturation is just a specific problem, of “certain moments and days.”

“Perhaps we must specify at certain times because it is not a permanent issue,” he says about the tower before remembering that the town hall already works to create “new centralities” in Malaga. In fact one of the targets of the tender that has unleashed the controversy seeks precisely that: activate alternative routes tourist that help Distribute the load of visitors, venting the center.

Why is it important? For several reasons. The first is that there is an alarming idea that flies The report: The possibility that Malaga dies of tourist success. And Spain has already proven that this is not so difficult.

Recently one of the most popular travel guides among the Angloplants He advised Its users visit Mallorca, Barcelona and the Canary Islands in 2025 precisely because of their massification. In the Malaga document, it is warned that saturation harms the locals, but also visitors, and can degrade “the experience” they have in the city.

New yes, new no. Another reason is that the municipal report does nothing but confirm a problem, that of the Touristthat in Malaga has already generated several neighborhood protests, more expensive housing and obliged to the mayor a move token While the opposition claims a Hard response.

In fact, the report that the Consistory has just published is not the first to warn of the risks of massification. In 2005 the OMAU Observatory already prevented “tensions” that could derive from “numerous tourist visits.” Since then the flow of travelers He has shot.

Images | Jorge Fraganillo (Flickr) and Robert Lender (Flickr)

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