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Exact date of next Spain anti-tourism protests across 10 cities in WEEKS after ‘prepare to adjust plans' alert for Irish

Exact date of next Spain anti-tourism protests across 10 cities in WEEKS after ‘prepare to adjust plans' alert for Irish

The Irish Sun2 days ago

IRISH tourists chasing the sun in Spain this month could face fresh holiday hell as thousands of protestors prepare to take to the streets.
Despite demonstrators'
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Thousands protested against mass tourism in Tenerife last month
Credit: Getty Images
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A member of the Mallorca Platja Tour association demonstrating against tourist saturation in Majorca last summer
Credit: Getty Images
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Over 3,000 took to the streets of Barcelona and urged tourists to 'go home' last summer
Credit: Getty Images
And with
Representatives of 60 groups in
The demonstration will be led by campaign group 'Menys Turisme, Mes Vida' , meaning 'Less tourism, more life'.
The group claims everyday life of locals is "unbearable" due to the
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Jaume Pujol, a spokesman for the group, said: "We stand for the right to a dignified life and to demand an end to touristification".
Palma, Majorca's capital, is expected to be just one of many cities across Spain that will be brought to a standstill on June 15.
The demonstration in Palma will be held simultaneously with similar marches in
Some cities in
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The cities
plan to mobilise under a common slogan - but each city and region will decide how to organise their actions.
Anti-tourist mob attacks holidaymakers with water guns as they vow Spain faces 'long hot summer' of protest carnage
Unions have
But Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs has
A spokesperson said: "Public gatherings and demonstrations can at times take place with little or no warning.
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"We recommend that you stay clear of demonstrations and follow the advice of the local authorities.
"Protests may cause disruption to transport and other services. Be prepared to adjust your travel plans at short notice if necessary, and allow yourself extra time for your journey.
"You should also check for travel updates or transport delays before and during your trip to Spain."
'STAY HOME' DEMAND
Spain's
of the year kicked off in April after thousands of people across 40 cities
.
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Overcrowding has been cited as the
A
uthorities have been
to keep both tourists and locals happy
, including
Marchers in Madrid last month chanted "Get Airbnb out of our neighborhoods" and held up signs against short-term rentals.
In April, angry protestors in Majorca
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But locals also said overtourism reduces their quality of life, increases the cost of living and brings in cheap, "low-quality" tourists who don't contribute to the local economy.
An
The letter read: "ENOUGH! STAY HOME! We do not need more tourists; in fact, you are the source of our problem. DO NOT COME."
In 2024, a record-breaking 94 million international tourists visited Spain, making it the second most visited country in the world behind France.
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INDUSTRIAL ACTION
Meanwhile, bar staff in Tenerife are
summer - and bosses have warned the strikes could start as early as July.
The unions, Sindicalistas de Base and UGT, have issued bosses with an ultimatum, warning of a major walk out if they are not granted a 6.5 per cent salary bump.
They have made it clear that no further negotiations will happen if these conditions are not met.
The backlash follows a 170,000-strong
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Locals slammed low wages and poor working conditions in the booming holiday industry.
In June last year, beach workers also walked off the job over what unions called "precarious" conditions.
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Tourists watch on as locals demonstrate again mass tourism in Gran Canaria last month
Credit: REUTERS/Borja Suarez
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Protesters shouted slogans in front of a line of police as they last summer called for the protection of terraces of restaurants most frequented by tourists
Credit: LightRocket via Getty Images
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Thousands protested against mass tourism in Mallorca under the slogan 'Let's say basta!'
Credit: LightRocket via Getty Images

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Birmingham's Balti, blinders and Irish backbone
Birmingham's Balti, blinders and Irish backbone

Irish Post

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Birmingham's Balti, blinders and Irish backbone

MY eyes started to bulge, beads of sweat began to drip from my brow — I realised that my nascent journey through Birmingham's cultural chicane was about to hit the wall when I started to taste a bowl of fiery Hot and Sour Soup ( Suan La Tang ) at a lively Chinatown restaurant. Sichuan peppercorns seemed to be gouging dents in my tongue deeper than West Midlands potholes. And the accompanying fried rice, with its semi-volcanic red chilli paste, was failing to douse the flames. Luckily, I was saved soon after when a very welcome Guinness helped to soothe the pain at the Queen's Arms, a friendly and traditional Art Nouveau pub in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. Another pint followed and, quite soon, normal service was (almost) restored, Well, at least I was able to talk again. Such risks are at the heart of any trip into a metropolis which is a melting pot (literally) of so many of the world's cultures and cuisines, from Irish and Caribbean to Chinese and an abundance of South Asian. The previous day, I had voyaged into the heart of the city, along with my partner and photographer Sue Mountjoy, on a hired narrowboat in which we had tucked into our own version of the Birmingham Balti, cooked previously and frozen at home. James with the Wren tied up in the heart of Birmingham Our onboard meal was based on a recipe from Shababs, one of the city's original Balti houses that refined the legendary Pakistani curry, named after its wok-shaped cooking pan, the Balti, meaning bucket in Hindi and created locally in the 1970s. It was a delightful mix of spices, but our cooking skills hardly matched those of the local aficionados who, despite so much competition from burgers, desserts, pizzas and gastro pubs, can still be found across a city which served 20,000 Balti meals a week in the boom decades between 1990 and 2010. Of course, our four-day journey along the Worcester and Birmingham Canal was as much a relaxing wander through idyllic spring countryside as an exploration of the history of the waterway itself and the countless Irish labourers who sweated, bled and died carving its 22-mile route from Alvechurch Marina to Birmingham's historic Gas Street Basin. During the golden age of canals – a relatively short period, from 1760 to 1800 – it is not known how many Irishmen flocked to regions like the West Midlands, the epicentre of the network with 160 miles of canals (more waterways than Venice, it's claimed), most of which still survive, having come through the eras of the railways, roads and now enjoying a halcyon period of leisure use. Many of these men hid their identities and remain unrecorded by history, suspicious of often aggressive authorities and locals who accused them of taking their jobs by undercutting their already meagre wages. James tries out his onboard Balti curry Yet they came in their thousands, many to handle the harvests of the great English and Scottish estates, before switching to the canals for the better pay for the punishing work of digging 20 tons of earth a day, living amid the disease and violence of nearby shanty towns, where beer and brawling were the key distractions. It was hard not to think of their sacrifices when we faced our first and only real challenge, the seemingly endless and gloomy depths of the Wast Hill Tunnel, which is over a mile and a half long and took us over 35 minutes to pass through with just our boat headlight as our guide. It took the navvies three brutally hard and very dangerous years to dig by hand and build the brickwork (from 1794-97). I wondered how many had died there and had been the legendary 'heavy diggers' of Connemara or the 'tunnel tigers' from Donegal – both had a reputation as hard workers and, even today, have renowned skills in construction, particularly subterranean work. Wast Hill proved passable safely with steel-eyed concentration and, once through, gave me a light-headed sense of achievement when that light emerged and we savoured the warmth and birdsong at the end of its shiveringly dank depths. Even so, our cruise – with not a single ancient lock to negotiate - was ideal for a beginner and for boaters who prefer a gentle cruise through a tapestry of rolling Worcestershire countryside dotted with ancient waterside cottages and elegant grey herons who stared at us intently from the towpaths, hopeful that our propellor would expose a doomed fish or two for lunch. The Wren moored in central Birmingham Our first mooring was at Bournville, the UK's 'Chocolate Town' and home to the all-embracing Cadbury business started in 1824 by Quaker John just four miles away in Birmingham's Bull Street - now American-owned and one of the world's biggest confectionery brands. We had a fascinating wander round the elegant and green Arts and Crafts model village, which the Cadbury dynasty built to provide workers with better living conditions than the cramped Victorian city. But it was in among the giggling children at the Cadbury World exhibition centre (over 500,000 visitors each year) that we saw how clever marketing and continuous change made us both obsessed as children with Dairy Milk! Next day, a small boy Ollie (3) and his great grandmother stopped to chat and look over our 49-foot steel monster, between train spotting on the adjoining Cross-City rail line into Birmingham. 'How fast does it go?' he asked. 'Not very, I'm afraid,' I replied honestly, to his clear disappointment. Yet, as we cast off with the help of our neighbouring boat owner and with advice about the big city's attractions from a young man living in his boat opposite, we appreciated that life at 4-miles-an-hour is a wellbeing antidote to today's busy world. Even as busy Birmingham crept up on us, through the fields, suburban warehouses, and graffiti-emblazoned walls of Selly Oak, Edgbaston and eventually through heart of the city's waterways, the 230-year-old canal nerve centre, Gas Street Basin, and our final mooring berth, Brindley Place, once grimy and choked with industry but now home to countless lively bars, restaurants and such attractions as the National Sea Life Centre, Legoland and the Symphony Hall. For two nights, despite being surrounded by such full-on nightlife, our mooring proved oddly peaceful, with several friendly passing dog walkers, pram-pushers and cuddling couples stopping to chat whenever we stepped out. And by foot and buses, we immersed ourselves in the many cultures of a city which has been home to the Irish for over two centuries, with over 15,000 Irish immigrations arriving by the mid 19th century, attracted by work on the canals, railways and construction industry. The Wren sails through the lengthy Wast Hill Tunnel Our trips took us to some of the city's iconic centres, including Digbeth, the spiritual home of the Irish, and the fascinating Back-to-Backs Museum, where the National Trust spent £3 million preserving three 19th century houses that show the disease, landlord cruelty and squalor those families endured. Interestingly, our guide informed us that due to the high water table locally, the poorest families had not been forced to live in the dark and windowless house cellars as so many arriving Irish had had to endure in 19th century Liverpool. After our return to Alvechurch Marina, we handed back the 'Wren' and drove to Dudley to spend the day at the remarkable Black Country Living Museum, whose grim canal yard featured in the earliest episodes of television's long-running Birmingham drama, Peaky Blinders. The dramatized Blinders on TV are a violent group of organised criminals with Irish roots (led by Tommy Shelby played by Cillian Murphy) but the truth of the fearsome late 19th and early 20th century Birmingham 'slogging' gangs is more complex. Some, grew out of the anti-Irish Catholic violence stirred up by roving preachers who encouraged widespread looting and destruction of the impoverished Irish homes around Park Street in the 1860s. For protection, many youngsters signed up to what became an early youth cult of the day. Today, the Blinders are long gone. And, despite Birmingham's recent headlines over bin strikes and council finance chaos, we enjoyed a city with great pubs and live trad music and learned how their modern-day Irish descendants are now the poets, writers, teachers, builders and musicians that have helped construct the kaleidoscopic culture of a city that can certainly float your Balti boat. FACTFILE For canal trip details visit or call 0344 984 0322 ABC Boat Hire or call 0330 333 0590 Hire prices for the 'Wren,' for example, start at £699 for a short break (three or four nights), £999 for a week. Boats range from 32ft to 70ft and can accommodate from two up to 12 people. For more information about the canal network, visit See More: Balti, Birmingham, Irish, Travel

Court escorts for prisoners at risk due to overcrowding, Irish prisons boss warns
Court escorts for prisoners at risk due to overcrowding, Irish prisons boss warns

The Journal

time41 minutes ago

  • The Journal

Court escorts for prisoners at risk due to overcrowding, Irish prisons boss warns

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Irish wife of man jailed in Iraq for four years was ‘numb with shock' after release
Irish wife of man jailed in Iraq for four years was ‘numb with shock' after release

Sunday World

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  • Sunday World

Irish wife of man jailed in Iraq for four years was ‘numb with shock' after release

'I got a little advance warning of his release and I was numb with shock as it was so unexpected.' The Irish wife of Robert Pether who was released from an Iraqi jail last night has revealed how she was numb with shock when told the news The couple live in Elphin county Roscommon and Robert was locked up four years ago after being caught up in a dispute between his employers and the Iraqi government but is now out on bail. His wife Desree told the Sunday World, 'I got a little advance warning of his release and I was numb with shock as it was so unexpected.' Robert Pether News in 90 Seconds - 6th June 2025 'He called me from his lawyers phone late last night and only then did I really believe it. It was a video call and he looked so ill he was barely recognizable. 'I hadn't seen him in weeks because he was too weak to take calls and we had been correspnding solely by email' As part of his bail conditions Robert has to remain in Iraq and Desree's efforts to address that have been delayed. 'The Muslim festival of Eid has just begun and nothing gets done for a week so we just have to wait, but having waited four years to get this far we'll manage that 'He needs to get home for medical help so we'll battle on'. Tanáiste Simon Harris pleaded Roberts case in a meeting with Iraqi officials last month and Desree said: 'To be fair the government here have gone above and beyond the call of duty to help'

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