Sunbed wars escalate… to seaside umbrellas!

Spanish sunbed wars look to have escalated with tourists now battling for the best umbrella on the beach – by dashing out at the crack of dawn to mark their territory over prime shoreline parasols. 

According to locals in Majorca, many foreign holidaymakers are marking their territory in the early morning, reserving their straw-covered beach umbrellas on the first row, just inches from the sea.

Over the weekend, more than a dozen parasols were bagged at dawn near a leading hotel in Playa de Palma – an area popular with Germans.

Towels were seen hanging from almost all the poles, many of them belonging to nearby resorts.

According to Ultimahora.es, holidaymakers are reserving the best spots early in the morning so they can then go off and enjoy their breakfast without missing out on the chance to grab a good spot by the sea. 

Tourists enjoy a sunny day at the Playa de Palma beach in Mallorca. According to locals on the Spanish island, many foreign holidaymakers are marking their territory in the early morning, with dozens of parasols being taken way before the crowds arrive

People sunbathe on Playa de Palma beach in Mallorca, Spain

 Palma city council provides the rental service for sun loungers and parasols on the beach through an external company between the hours of 10am and 7pm, with a daily fee. 

A German resident who has lived in Playa de Palma for years said: ‘You don’t just see this here. You can even find it all over Playa de Palma.’

Another called the sun bed wars a  ‘totally bad habit’. 

‘Securing sun loungers with a towel in the early morning is absolutely inconsiderate and absolutely not acceptable. If no one blocks sun loungers with towels in the morning, everyone can have one. After all, we all want the same thing: a relaxing holiday.’

Sun lounger wars are not uncommon in Spain, but they tend to take place on pool-sides rather than beaches. 

Just last month, a British tourist blasted two men for hogging five sunbeds between them at a Benidorm resort. 

Paul Hitchcock, who regularly holidays in Benidorm, shared a picture of two sunseekers at his hotel who had stacked up multiple deckchairs – seemingly preventing other holidaymakers from bagging a spot. 

‘Two people, five sunbeds, and they are not the only ones,’ he told fellow tourists, who slammed what they called the men’s ‘selfish’ sunbathing etiquette.

Reactions to the latest beach-side antics come as anti-tourism protests sweep Spain, with locals demanding tighter controls on mass tourism. 

Just this weekend, tourists dining in the Spanish city of Barcelona were targeted with water guns by anti-tourism protestors. 

Under the slogan ‘Enough! Let’s put limits on tourism’, some 2,800 people – according to police – marched along a waterfront district of Barcelona to demand a new economic model that would reduce the millions of tourists that visit every year.

Protesters carried signs reading ‘Barcelona is not for sale,’ and, ‘Tourists go home,’ before some used water guns on tourists eating outdoors at restaurants in popular tourist hotspots. Chants of ‘Tourists out of our neighbourhood’ rang out as some stopped in front of the entrances to hotels.

Barcelona’s rising cost of housing, up 68 percent in the past decade, is one of the main issues for the movement, along with the effects of tourism on local commerce and working conditions in the city of 1.6 million inhabitants.

The island of Majorca has also seen locals protest about tourist saturation. 

Around 10,000 locals took to the streets of Palma, Majorca’s capital, at the end of May, where they were heard chanting ‘tourists go home’, as they demanded curbs on mass tourism.