Coordinated protests swept through Barcelona, Palma, and Ibiza as thousands of residents demanded officials abandon airport expansion projects they say will deepen an overtourism crisis already straining their communities.
Demonstrators filled the streets of three of Spain's most popular holiday destinations, blowing whistles, waving banners, and marching behind a blunt slogan: "No to expansion, neither now nor never." In Barcelona alone, local police estimated roughly 5,500 people turned out, while organizers put the figure closer to 30,000. Thousands more rallied in Palma, Mallorca, and Ibiza Town, though no official crowd counts were released for those cities.
The target is Aena, Spain's national airport authority, which approved a 2027, 2031 investment plan that includes preparations to expand Barcelona's El Prat airport. Protesters say the project, and similar upgrades planned for Mallorca's Son Sant Joan airport and Ibiza's terminal, will funnel still more tourists into regions already buckling under the weight of mass tourism. Aena denies that the expansions will increase visitor numbers, insisting the improvements are necessary to meet changing demands and comply with European safety rules.
The Barcelona march launched at noon from Passeig de Gràcia, one of the city's most famous boulevards, and wound through the streets to Plaça de Sant Jaume, the square that houses the city's government buildings. Around 300 cyclists and four farm tractors joined the procession, a visual meant to underscore the protesters' argument that public money should go toward commuter infrastructure, not airport terminals.
Banners spelled out the movement's grievances in plain language. "Commuter trains for the people, not airports for the 1 per cent," read one. Others carried messages like "Support, help, this is an ecocide" and "Listen to science, this is an emergency." Organizers said more than 250 organizations backed the demonstration, ranging from environmental groups to health professionals to an educational assembly. More than 150 academics also lent their names, the Daily Mail reported.
The demonstrations were described as mainly peaceful, with no arrests reported.
Alba Bou, the mayor of El Prat de Llobregat, the municipality where Barcelona's airport sits, offered some of the sharpest criticism. Bou said:
"It is disappointing to think that they have not buried an expansion proposal that does not do any service to ordinary people and to those who aspire to leave a liveable world to future generations."
The expansion fight is not new. The Spanish government and the Generalitat de Catalunya, Catalonia's regional government, announced an agreement to expand El Prat roughly five years ago. That announcement triggered an earlier round of public opposition. Aena's recently approved investment plan revived the issue by formally including a project to prepare for the expansion.
In Palma, protest spokesman Pere Joan Femenia said the Balearic Islands were "at the limit." He pointed to late-night air traffic as a quality-of-life issue residents can no longer tolerate. Femenia said:
"It cannot be that after midnight planes continue to pass over our houses."
Palma demonstrators also pushed for something beyond stopping the expansion. They demanded approval of an "airport co-management law", legislation that would give the Balearic Islands a direct role in decisions about airport infrastructure. Under the current system, Aena controls those decisions at the national level, and island residents have little formal input.
On Ibiza, the youth organization Associació Joves d'Eivissa called an evening demonstration in Ibiza Town. Organizers there condemned plans they said would nearly double the airport's boarding gates from 17 to 32, expand a VIP area, and create a new terminal section for non-Schengen flights, passengers traveling to and from countries outside Europe's passport-free travel zone.
Aena's position on Ibiza is that the refurbishment would not increase the airfield's capacity or the number of takeoffs and landings per hour. The authority maintains the gate increase is driven by the need to separate Schengen and non-Schengen passengers and to meet European safety regulations. Aena did not specify which regulations require the changes.
The core disagreement comes down to a simple question: does building bigger airports bring more tourists? Aena says no. The authority frames its multimillion-dollar investment plans as upgrades to existing infrastructure, keeping pace with safety standards and operational demands, not expanding capacity. Protesters call that distinction meaningless. More gates, more terminal space, and better facilities, they argue, inevitably attract more flights and more visitors to communities already struggling with overcrowded streets, strained public services, and rising housing costs.
Neither side offered hard data to settle the argument. Aena did not release projected passenger figures tied to the expansions. Organizers did not cite specific studies linking past airport upgrades to tourism increases. What the protesters did offer was scale: coordinated action across three cities, backed by hundreds of civic organizations, in regions where anti-tourism sentiment has been building for years.
Several open questions remain. No official response from Aena or the Spanish government to the protests has been reported. The status of the proposed airport co-management law for the Balearic Islands is unclear, whether it has been formally introduced in any legislature or remains a protest demand. And the precise cost of the expansion plans across all three airports has not been publicly detailed.
When thousands of residents in the places tourists love most take to the streets to say they have had enough, the people running the airports might want to listen before they pour concrete. Locals who live with the consequences of growth deserve a seat at the table, not just a view of the runway from their bedroom window at midnight.
