Angry stickers telling tourists to ‘go home’ appear on buildings in Malaga

‘Stinks of tourists’ and ‘a family used to live here’ are among the messages plastered on the walls of tourist apartments

Fed-up residents have put hostile messages calling for tourists to “go home” on the outside of buildings around the centre of Malaga.

Stickers on tourist apartments featured phrases including “stinks of tourists”, “a family used to live here” and “before this was my house”.

The notes first appeared after a bar owner, known as Dani Drunko, suggested the idea of putting a twist on the apartment signs on buildings with some different phrases.

Mr Drunko, who owns a bar on Ramón Franquelo Street, told Malaga news site Sur that he was kicked out of the house he had been living in for 10 years after he was not allowed to renew his contract because it was being adapted for tourist rentals.

After initiating the idea of adding stickers to the apartments, Mr Drunko said the community got involved in a “very creative” way, but admitted “this has got out of hand”.

He said: “Everyone has joined the cause and has given their all, so much so that they are printing and posting them all over the streets of the centre - I see more and more.”

But Mr Drunko said that he has “nothing against tourists” and stressed the community wants the issue of housing to be regulated.

The provincial secretary of the PSOE, Dani Pérez, encouraged the idea as he wrote on X: “Before this was Centro, as this sticker next to several tourist flats says.

“You walk the streets of Málaga and it is practically impossible to find a residential building that does not have a lock and password.”

He criticised Malaga’s right-wing mayor Paco de la Torre, saying he “continues without lifting a finger for the people of Malaga, expelling them from the city where they were born”.

But local lawyer Juan Luis Gomez criticised the campaign, adding: “The same people who are against tourism then want work, as if we depended here for our livelihoods on the aerospace industry.

“It’s one thing to regulate tourism and another to throw out tourism.”