Tourism: a change of course is needed in order to move forward
We absolutely need a collective victory that will make the working class advance towards a recovery of its rights. The path must be led by the bulk of the class that works tirelessly on the front line of tourism and must find in the spaces of union organization the necessary tools to develop its struggle
The original article in Spanish and Catalan can be read here
Once again summer has come and gone on the Balearic Islands and once again, we have seen how the economic system working at its maximum performance, acting as a real meat grinder fuelled by the forces of the working class. The year 2024 seems to be another record year for the Balearic Islands due to the visitors we will receive. The year 2023 ended with almost 18 million tourists on our islands, and this year everything seems to indicate that we will surpass this mark very easily. We find, ironically, that this new record is surrounded by the wave of protests that have been unleashed during this summer throughout the Balearic Islands. They are the materialization, in general, of popular discontent with the measures of the last “progressive” government. However, as the Communist Party in the Balearic Islands it is our duty to analyse reality from a class perspective and to put on the table for debate some considerations on how tourism has developed.
The UNWTO (World Tourism Organisation) defines tourism as “any activity carried out by a person outside their usual environment for personal, professional or business reasons”. From this definition we can deduce that a person outside their environment needs a series of services to satisfy basic needs: travel, rest and food. Therefore, we can conclude that a certain infrastructure and logistical structure is necessary to be able to develop tourism activity. These have been developed over the last sixty years by public-private collaboration. This collaboration consisted of the government in power allocating millions of pesetas or euros to build highways, ports, airports and to urbanise uninhabited coastal areas so that builders and hoteliers could do their business maximising their profits. In short, a clear transfer of public capital to develop private businesses that have also meant condemning the working class of the Balearic Islands to extreme working conditions.
It is precisely at this point that we must insert a prime actor into the story, the great forgotten collective un-regarded by the political parties in the chambers of office: the working class. They are waiters, cooks, receptionists, drivers, workers, and dozens of other professions that support the great wheel of tourism. All the people who, anonymously, get up at unsociable hours, cross paths with people who return from partying all night to go to work. From split shifts, from spending their whole life at the workplace during the summer months to spend the winter without being able to work. A system that lives off the health of our class, that extracts every last drop of sweat in the summer months and that is incapable of guaranteeing the right to work. We are no longer talking about stable work throughout the year or jobs with good conditions.
Capital knows that labour is necessary for its operation, especially in tourism. The services have to be carried out by someone who is poorly paid, in precarious conditions that only ensure their survival. At this point, migrant labour plays an important role, as it arrives on our islands, like so many other civilisations that have passed through here, seeking a better future. This migrant population often comprises illegal workers, without contracts or insurance, without any kind of protection, and tourism takes advantage of their motivation to fight to get ahead. Because tourism needs (cheap) labour more than labour needs tourism. As our recent history shows, tourism made workers in the Balearics leave the countryside to move to the coast, that coast which has always been regarded with respect, whether due to storms or, historically, due to piracy. However, pirates have not disappeared into history. Now they dress in jackets and have combed their hair, they have become hoteliers and have dedicated themselves to plundering the natural space and living off the work of other people. Our people.
The last financial crisis left hoteliers in a tight spot in terms of cash availability. In search of an alternative that would allow them to keep the wheels turning, most of them opted to sell their hotels to banks and investment funds. Today, a large number of the hotels we see on the Balearic coast are owned by foreign capital. In fact, the main owner of hotel beds in Spain is none other than BlackRock. Hotel chains sign management contracts for these establishments, ensuring their business for a few years and contributing a good percentage each year to the ownership of the property. In this way, they only worry about the pure financial management of the business, with dozens of fiscal engineering manoeuvres to pay less taxes, with profits diverted towards investments in countries in the Caribbean or Southeast Asia.
This management system benefits the large hotel chains, which, through these manoeuvres, obtain advantageous conditions over small businesses that cannot compete with the prices or services that the large companies in the sector are capable of. With these examples we can appreciate the insertion of our economy within global imperialism with this monopolistic tendency of hotel capital, increasingly concentrated in fewer hands as well as the export of capital by hotel companies throughout the world. These conditions were defined at the time by Lenin as characteristics of imperialism as the highest phase of capitalism, the period in which we live.
Returning UNWTO’s definition if tourism, we can conclude that tourism has existed throughout the history of humanity through human movements for commercial or cultural exchanges with other tribes, civilizations and societies. From ancient times to the present day, and not just since the 19th century with the European Grand Tour, tourism has been an element of human societies. However, from the 19th century to the present day, the development of the capitalist production system has led to the unprecedented growth of the tourism industry, fuelling its voracity for market expansion. We cannot forget that this expansion intensified in the second half of the 20th century, favoured by the emergence of the so-called welfare state and by new economic alliances such as the European Economic Community. These new alliances were the vehicle through which the international division of labour was intensified, turning southern Europe into the playground of the European Union.
With this role of our territory within the global imperialist chain, the bourgeois propagandists sold us a fairy-story in which with tourism the working class would see all its needs met. There would be no need to produce food, because we would all be living off tourism: thus, we abandoned the countryside. There is no need for strong industry, because we live off tourism: let's dismantle the factories. In this way we have reached the supposed "democratization of tourism" that they spoke of. We have lost our home, we have made our homes available to visitors and now, neither teachers, nor doctors, nor waiters, nor cooks have anywhere to live. The generations to come will not even be in a position to dream of being able to live in their home, condemned by the high cost of living. This is how, in this whole process, luxury hotels and all-inclusive resorts emerged and, little by little, hostels, inns and B&Bs disappeared. These establishments have been the ones that provided a place to sleep and to feed people who had to travel for whatever reason. Many people might want to return to this more artisanal model of tourism, so to speak, but we don't have to try to turn the wheel of time backwards. What we need to do is move forward.
"Pirates have not disappeared into history. Now they dress in jackets and have combed their hair, they have become hoteliers and have dedicated themselves to plundering the natural space and living off the work of other people. Our people."
We must move forward to push back the Balearicisation that has depredated our territory and exploited our class, all so that the hotel monopolists can maximise their profit share. We must move forward to be able to ensure such a basic right as free housing for everyone. We must move forward to be able to build a tourist infrastructure and logistics that is at the service of the working class and that satisfies their rest.
In the declaration of the European Communist Action, in which the PCTE has participated actively, it is made clear that it is imperative to claim the right to rest and leisure.
This does not mean staying at home, sitting on the sofa suffering the continuous heat waves that this year have taken the lives of 190 people in the Balearic Islands alone. Rather, a network of establishments must be built that allow workers to enjoy leisure time and recreation during periods of rest and vacation. This implies that these establishments must be managed by the workers themselves in a democratic manner and under centralized management throughout the state, putting the general interest of the working class above all else and ensuring access to quality rest, decent housing and the preservation of the environment and its ecosystems.
However, it is necessary to transfer to the immediate struggle a demand for the right of the working class to both physical and mental health. These rights are key to being able to fight for a continuous improvement of working conditions and to see an end to endless days of work in conditions that endanger our health. For all this, it is necessary that the protests that are spreading throughout the main tourist areas be imbued with this class character. To demand an improvement in the labour rights of the working class, which is the one that, with its sweat and blood, makes the entire global tourism industry work. We absolutely need a collective victory that will make the working class advance towards a recovery of its rights. The path must be led by the bulk of the class that works tirelessly on the front line of tourism and must find in the spaces of union organization the necessary tools to develop its struggle. In this sense, we must strengthen class union structures and prepare them for open conflict with the bourgeoisie. This is the change we need, because changing course is necessary, but a new direction must be established in order to move forward.
For all these reasons, from the PCTE in the Balearic Islands we proclaim the following points:
- Tourism has been a phenomenon that has developed throughout the history of humanity. Capitalism has put the entire tourism industry at the service of its interests, plundering different ecosystems and condemning the working class to a life of misery.
- The Balearic Islands' tourism industry is one of the main elements of the Spanish economy, which is fully inserted into the global imperialist pyramid.
- The working class must arm itself in trade union structures in order to prepare for an open conflict against the bourgeoisie. Only in this way can some of the most negative aspects of the current tourism model be mitigated.
- It is necessary to strengthen the ranks of the Communist Party and organize to build socialism-communism, the only system capable of guaranteeing tourism that truly satisfies the working class’s need for leisure time and that restores the natural environments that have been destroyed.