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Local people are increasingly showing their dissatisfaction at increased rents and the expansion of the vacation rental market over regular housing. Ordinary shops are being replaced by handicrafts and souvenir stores, fancy bars and the like. The old town is the epicentre of tourist activity in San Sebastián, so anyone who lives near it is basically living in a theme park with the all the crowds, pollution and noise that brings.

Protests against mass tourism first erupted during the summer of 2017 and the movement keeps growing. These spontaneous demonstrations by people claiming the right to inhabit the city have helped broaden social awareness of the issue. This has in turn spurred the authorities to take action, with, for example, a tourist tax proposal, implicitly accepting thatovertourism is a real problem for the city.

But San Sebastián is far from being an isolated case in risking economic depletion from mass tourism. Along with Venice, Barcelona, Lisbon, Palma de Mallorca and many other southern European cities, San Sebastián is now part of a network fighting for a more sustainable model of tourism and ultimately working for a perhaps surprising common goal: the opposite of growth.

• Mikel Agirre-Maskariano is a geographer and member of Bizilagunekin, which advocates for an alternative approach to tourism