Spanish villagers trapped in homes by crush of holidaymakers to vote on tourist ban

Residents of Binibeca Vell in Menorca are frustrated by the throngs of noisy and disrespectful visitors to their seaside town

Just under 200 residents live in the picturesque Menorca village of Binibeca Vell but throngs of bodies regularly trap Edoardo Gomez inside his house.
“There’ll be a person posing for a photo. And as soon as they’re done, another one steps forward,” he said.
The hamlet on the coast of Menorca attracts around 800,000 tourists a year who come to take photos against a backdrop of narrow, twisting alleyways, steep staircases and whitewashed houses that are reminiscent of a Cyclades village in Greece with a splash of Cappadocia’s fairy chimneys.
The suffocating crush is such that residents will hold a vote on Friday to decide whether to take the extreme measure of banning tourists altogether.
Most villages would struggle, legally and practically, to close to tourists. But not Binibeca Vell.
It may look like an idyllic, centuries-old fishermen’s village, overlooking a narrow inlet filled with boats, but it was in fact built in the 1960s as a private estate.
In May, the village decreed that tourists would only be allowed to enter between 11am and 8pm. Outside those hours, chains are strung across entrance alleys and holidaymakers are denied entry.
There are signs all around imploring visitors to behave respectfully. “Private property – keep the village clean. Respect the visiting hours. Visit in silence.”
The village’s official website has had to list in blunt terms the conduct that is not tolerated: “Do not enter houses, no photos inside houses, do not sit on private chairs.”
But for some locals, the warnings do not go far enough.
“The tourists touch everything. One of our neighbours has lots of plants in pots and the tourists move them so that they can get a better photo. They sit in chairs on private verandas. 
“They talk loudly and the noise reverberates because the village is very small and enclosed. They sit on steps and when the owner asks them to move, they refuse because they’re trying to get the perfect photo,” said Mr Gomez, 31, an accountant who lives with his girlfriend.
As the sun blazes down from a clear blue sky, young women take photos of each other posing beneath dazzling white arches while other tourists snap pictures of a local man sitting in a chair reading a newspaper, ignoring the crush of visitors.
“We pay dearly for being the most popular tourist attraction in Menorca,” Oscar Monge, president of the residents’ association of Binibeca Vell, said recently. “Binibeca is promoted by the island administration and the tourism companies, but what benefit do we get out of it? We don’t have anything against tourism, but sometimes it feels like we’re living in Disneyland Paris.”
But any attempt to hermetically seal the village will be strongly opposed by the owners of a handful of boutiques, bars and restaurants clustered just outside.
“It would be a big problem for us,” said Noria Llabres, who owns a shop selling hats, baskets, bags and sandals in the strip that adjoins Binibeca Vell.
“If fewer tourists come, we’ll sell less. All the businesses here live off tourism.”
The referendum has proved so contentious that a representative for the residents’ association said that it might have to be postponed to a later date.
Whatever the outcome, the unrelenting pressures on Binibeca Vell are a reflection of a broader over-tourism in Europe.
There have been protests in neighbouring Majorca and Ibiza.
Menorca is less developed, but that is changing and much of it is down to digital platforms that offer short-term rentals. The likes of Airbnb have enticed many more tourists to the island, placing immense pressure on water supplies, electricity, traffic congestion and waste disposal.
The island now attracts around 1.5 million tourists a year, almost double the number of a decade ago.
“Menorca has started suffering from over-tourism in the last seven or eight years,” said Miquel Camps, from an environmental group called GOB – the Balearic Group for Ornithology and the Protection of the Environment. “We need to have a discussion about what sort of model we want for the future. We don’t want the Ibiza model.”
His organisation has found that while 6,000 properties on the island are rented out to tourists legally, there are at least another 8,000 that are rented out illegally – undeclared and untaxed.
There is also the issue of foreigners buying up old farmhouses in the countryside and apartments in places like Mahon, the island’s historic capital.
Locals are being priced out of the market – waiters, construction workers, nurses, teachers and many others can no longer afford the soaring rents.
“Young people in Menorca find it very difficult to find housing. They have to share with four or five others, as they did at university. The rental costs are crazy. This is a new phenomenon,” said Mr Camps.
“There are people who can’t come to Menorca to work because they say that most of their salary will go towards rent.”
There are just too many tourists, campaigners say. One solution, which has been adopted by the tiny Balearic Island of Formentera, is to reduce the number of rental cars on the island – if people cannot rent a car on holiday, they may go elsewhere.
“We need to displace people from the high season months of July and August to months like October. This is not a message about anti-tourism. It’s a message about encouraging quality tourism. We have to put limits on the numbers,” said Mr Camps.
Nobody is suggesting that Menorca can survive without visitors. 
“Tourism is needed on the island but there should be a limit to the numbers. As locals, we feel the pressure on the roads, on the beaches, in the supermarkets. We need a management plan,” said Nuria Sintes, acting director of Menorca Preservation, an environmental NGO.
As the sun sets over Binibeca Vell, crowds of tourists invade the village looking to take the perfect shot.
“We do have sympathy for the inhabitants, it’s crazy in summer,” said Alicia, the owner of a boutique just outside the village. “Tourists enter people’s homes to take photos, the residents are very tired of all this. I want them to have their privacy but at the same time, my whole family depends on my shop.”
Business is good for her during the summer months – the village, nicknamed the Mykonos of the Balearics, is on the itinerary of most tourists who come to the island.
“In Menorca, 88 per cent of people depend directly or indirectly on tourism,” said Alicia, who declined to give her surname. “So what do you do? We don’t want to be so dependent. But we don’t have alternatives. It’s not as bad yet as over-tourism in Ibiza or Majorca, but you can see the signs. Everybody knows it’s going to happen.”