Until recently, I viewed Málaga’s growing movement against ‘overtourism’ with scepticism and detachment. During the eleven years that I’ve lived in Andalucia, this gorgeous city has always been a tourist hub – which is good, because tourism drives Spain’s economy, accounting for 13 per cent of GDP and around the same proportion of jobs. The Costa del Sol, as Málaga’s coast is called, welcomed a record 15 million visitors in 2025, generating €22 billion (£18.8 billion) in revenue. Spain clearly needs its tourists, so should be careful about putting them off.

Xenophobia, I suspected, was mainly responsible for the protest of June 2024, which saw 15,000 residents march through Málaga behind a banner reading ‘Málaga to live in, not survive in.’ And how do you quantify ‘overtourism’ anyway? But now, after a comically bad experience in the Costa del Sol’s capital a couple of weeks ago, I’m starting to think the locals have a point.

I’d paid for a room in central Málaga on a Saturday (for my birthday), and was told that I could check in from 1pm. When there was no sign of the host by quarter past, I called the number provided by the property. Didn’t exist. It was another hour before someone emerged from the building, the entire first floor of which was being noisily renovated (not mentioned in advance).  

As if I were a massive inconvenience, this guy – surly, spaced-out, dressed for the beach – told me it would be another half an hour before the room was ready. I was due to meet friends for lunch at half two so couldn’t wait around. He gave me the keys and assured me everything would be sorted by the time I came back.  

Returning about half past six, post-beach and desperate for a shower, I found another guest asleep in my bed. After a lengthy discussion with the host, during which he offered to buy me dinner to apologise for what was obviously a double-booking, I decided to abort and take the last train home (luckily an option for me, as it wouldn’t have been for, say, someone arriving late at night after a Transatlantic flight). Another guy showed up and gave me a cash refund that exceeded the price of the room by €15 – appreciated but also slightly dodgy.  

Half an hour and one beer later, I was laughing to myself about

this experience. I imagined double- and triple-booked rooms across the city: tourists sleeping on floors, in bathtubs and head-to-toe in beds, filling every square meter of the holiday rentals that locals say have priced them out of residential areas.  

For them, the situation is no joke. Rent prices in Málaga have risen by 135 per cent over the last decade, pushing the province ahead of Madrid as the second most expensive in Spain (behind the Balearic Islands). It now has more holiday accommodation units than any other Spanish city and has tripled its tourist bed capacity in the last eight years. Around the lovely Plaza de la Merced, where I’d booked, a quarter of the apartments are for tourists. It’s now hard to find long-term rentals, even studio apartments, in the centre of Málaga for less than €1,200 or €1,300 (£1,000 or £1,110) per month, but the region’s average wage is only about €1,400 (£1,197).

Relieved to be heading home, I hailed a taxi on Plaza de la Merced. The driver lurched around in his seat to greet me: ‘Málaga’, he said in an extremely loud and high-pitched voice, ‘is the tourist dustbin of the world!’ During the ten minutes it took to reach the train station – most of it spent stalled at traffic lights, watching half-naked visitors walk to or from the beach – he raged against the ‘destruction’ of his home city by tourism. By the time we arrived, he was so angry he was spitting.  

This was, of course, wildly unprofessional behaviour. But it’s not hard to understand where this driver’s anger was coming from. Every single business in the centre of Málaga is geared towards tourists. Crowd density in the Old Town reaches Oxford Street levels in the summer and there’s barely an off-season anymore. It is still a beautiful city, with an amazing culinary scene. But as one of the protestors said in June 2024, many residents feel its ‘energy and complexity and heterogeneity’ is being threatened by an economic model excessively focused on tourism.

Málaga’s regional government has recently announced a three-year moratorium on the construction of new hotels and holiday apartments in residential areas. Whether that will make life easier for locals remains to be seen. But there can no longer be any doubt that Málaga has a tourism problem. Just ask the taxi drivers.