On an improvised banner made of wood, in black felt-tip pen and in large letters was written: "Everywhere you look, there are foreigners."
The police announced that 10.000 people gathered on the streets of Palma de Mallorca on the last weekend of May, at the beginning of the summer season, to express their dissatisfaction because tourism has made life unbearable for the population on the largest Spanish island.
But where did this sudden rebellion and complaints from people come from in places where a large number of tourists have been common for decades?
The answer, it seems, is complex.
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One of the reasons is certainly the consequences of the restrictions introduced during the covid-19 pandemic.
But also the fact that many more people in the world now have the money to travel, which raises important questions about the future of tourism.
This year should be a record year for tourism and is expected to surpass the previous record of 2019.
It seems that this is the revenge of travelers and the tourism industry after the pandemic and that long-standing and strong doubts about whether it is safe to travel have disappeared.
In Spain's Balearic Islands, which include Majorca, huge post-pandemic demand has pushed up rents so high that locals say they can no longer afford to live in their hometowns.
Nurses, doctors and police officers are also struggling to cover their rent.
Therefore, it's not hard to see why local residents now feel like extras in their own movie.
Despite the recession, more and more people in the West feel they can afford regular travel abroad, and indeed, some see it as an essential need and a kind of unwritten human right.
A similar mood prevails in the Canary Islands, which are about 2.500 kilometers away from Majorca.
They have been a favorite destination of the British for decades, and tourism has become a key part of the economy.
Today, tourism accounts for 35 percent of the archipelago's gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 40 percent of the total workforce.
However, here too, the cost of living is high for the local population.
Chris Elkington is the editor of a local English-language newspaper The Canarian Weekly).
He started living in Tenerife in 1991 as a tourist worker and over the years witnessed the flourishing of tourism.
But such uncontrolled growth has its negative side: rent prices are too high for many local residents, and the average income in the Canaries is the lowest in Spain.
Many catering workers were forced to move away.
Elkington says the continued growth in the number of accommodation units being rented out to tourists comes at a price.
"Many landlords are very cautious now. Less and less accommodation is being rented out for a longer period, and more and more to tourists for vacations via online platforms," he says.
"The number of available properties has decreased significantly, and prices are increasing exponentially. And unfortunately, because of that, living here has become very, very expensive."
But in the Canaries, accommodation prices are not the only problem.
Some believe that the impact of tourism on the environment is increasingly unsustainable.
At the demonstration at the end of April, where 20.000 people gathered, the spokesperson of the group 'Canaries is all over their heads' said that the situation had reached a critical point.
"We have reached a point where the balance between the use of resources and the well-being of the population has been disturbed, especially during the last year".
Elkington points to the fact that water consumption in tourist areas with a large number of hotels and swimming pools is up to six times higher than in residential areas.
"They continue to build hotels and expand tourist areas," he says.
"But, unfortunately, the available resources cannot meet this".
In the Italian city of Venice, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, teacher Marta Sotoriva led her own battle against the excessive number of tourists.
She would sit in her small boat and block the entrance of the huge cruise ships that regularly entered the city center and from which thousands of tourists disembarked.
This battle has been won - cruisers can now only enter the city's industrial port.
However, fewer than 50.000 people live in Venice today, up from more than 150.000 in the 1970s.
Although cruise ships no longer sail into the city center, Sotoriva is not satisfied.
"I know a lot of people who even if they have money, they have income, they can't find houses," she says.
"We have come to the point where there are now more beds for tourists than there are available for local residents."
The great danger of tourism is that Venice is left without a vibrant, healthy mixed community with schools, local amenities and grocers, and becomes a historical theme park.
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So what measures are being taken against overcrowding at popular tourist destinations?
One of them is an attempt to regulate the number of visitors in the peak season.
This can be done by charging tickets to tourists who come for the day and informing potential visitors when it is busiest and when they should avoid arrivals.
Venice recently introduced a trial fee of five euros for the most popular timeslots for day visitors, and ticket prices are rising for many other famous historical destinations.
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The new mantra of tourist organizations is "high value, low number of visitors".
This means catering to travelers who will spend a lot of money and who care about the places they visit.
Another solution is to encourage people to avoid peak season travel and come in the off-season - between peak and end of season.
Also, if the school holidays were not everywhere at the same time, it would reduce the pressure on resorts and other tourist destinations during the intensive six-week period.
Many in the tourism industry also talk about "dispersion".
This means convincing tourists to visit alternative - similar but less busy destinations.
Limiting the space for car parking is a measure that is increasingly applied in order to reduce one-day visits.
However, this does not prevent the arrival of tourist buses bringing large groups.
And it's hard to imagine how a tourist from, say, South Korea wouldn't want to visit the Eiffel Tower and Venice during a hard-earned two-week trip to Europe.
But life is not unbearable only for residents of places that have been an unavoidable stop on tourist maps for years.
Hallstatt in Austria is a picturesque little alpine village on a lake, with viewpoints offering views of the beautiful surroundings, like something out of a fairy tale.
It's an urban legend that the town was the inspiration for the village of Arendale in the hugely popular Disney movie Frozen kingdom.
I met a mother from South Korea who brought her two daughters dressed as princesses just for this movie.
About 800 people live in Hallstatt, which is just a statistical error compared to about 10.000 visitors per day.
Many of them come in large tourist buses and stroll around, sometimes through residents' gardens, in search of the perfect selfie.
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Some locals were fed up and last year they blocked the tunnel through which the road to the city is reached.
Dr. Fridrih Idam, a longtime resident of Hallstatt and an architect, was in that group.
He lives in a house on a hill overlooking a lake.
He told me that he doesn't want tourists who only come for a day trip.
He says they spend little money and have made his life unbearable.
"There is no more public space for me and my fellow citizens," says Dr. Idam.
"At the gate of the church, tourists take selfies and pose on the graves. The problem with Hallstatt is that it is extremely popular on Instagram because of the fabulous photos that can be taken here.
"If you come by car and stay for only an hour, I tell you that you are not welcome".
Mayor Aleksander Šuec understands this, but feels helpless.
"Everyone knows there are too many tourists, but we can't just block the street and tell people they can't come in, because that's their right.
"This is not a dead end, because people pass through Hallstatt on their way to other cities".
Last year, the local council erected a fence around the famous selfie vantage point in an attempt to reduce the number of visitors.
But they had to remove it because the residents themselves complained that it obscured their view of their beautiful lake.
At the same time, the number of new tourists who now have the money and desire to travel the world is growing.
Since the beginning of this century, the growth of tourism in the world has been significantly contributed by travelers from China.
However, in terms of numbers, they are surpassed by a country that is an even greater source of world travelers.
India is the world's fastest growing major economy and currently has the largest population in the world.
The growing affluent middle class in the country of 1,4 billion people is spending money on trips to faraway dream destinations.
Last year, 27 million Indian tourists traveled abroad, and by 2030, their number is expected to reach 70 million.
Indian airlines have ordered nearly a thousand new planes anticipating a big surge in demand.
Depti Batnagar, who launched India's first-ever travel show in 2000, says social media has played a big role in encouraging Indians to travel.
"They want to go to certain places to take a selfie or think, 'That's one of the most photographed places,' and they have to go there," she says.
The vast majority of Indians cannot afford to travel, but in such a populous country, it is enough for only a small part of the rich and even the super-rich to start traveling and the number of tourists in the world will instantly increase significantly.
There are about 500 billionaires and one million millionaires in India. And many like expensive things.
It is striking that even though most things are constantly increasing in price, the prices of short-haul flights are still quite low, and sometimes cost less than a round of drinks in a cafe.
Orders for new commercial aircraft worldwide are on the rise.
Aviation is estimated to account for three to four percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and that share is expected to grow as other industries go green faster.
In the meantime, we need to deal with the moral conundrum, and in that sense, hypocrisy.
Many in the West, including myself, reaped the benefits of the post-war boom in tourism, exploring far-flung parts of the world without thinking about the unwanted consequences of mass tourism.
So, who are we to preach to the younger generations, for whom backpacking trips, which they go on during their vacation year after high school and before enrolling in college, mean growing up and a life-changing experience?
Who are we to lecture people from developing countries who can only now afford to travel?
It seems that there is no simple answer to who should travel where and when, and this was pointed out by one of the many posters in Palma de Mallorca.
"We live from tourism, but tourism does not allow us to live," it said.
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