In these times, it is less embarrassing to admit that you don't know the slightest bit of English, that you use Ozempic and even that you are dirty like Uncle Gilito, than to admit that you don't like to travel. In the 21st century, this is the last closet we have left to get out of. Every year, in the thick of summer, the most exotic proposals parade through networks and media, spiced by outgoing hordes and incoming hordes of tourists that clog roads, birds and airports. Since the pandemic, especially, no one's house has fallen on them and the world, as enormous as it is, has become small for us.
We don't really know where the money for such an expense comes from, but unless the photos we see on Instagram are a chroma key or a cheap poster, who more and who less has their story with their feet in the sun. Or diving in the Maldives. Or in the Tokyo subway. Or in Talavera de la Reina, buying ceramics. The fact is that not even Perry stays on land, at least by choice, even if we have to spend the entire fall eating macaroni and tomato. Traveling has been romanticized (to the delight of business) and much more the discourse that it makes us better. If you don't like it, you are very free to recognize such eccentricity, but you will be accused of not being interesting, cultured or curious. You'll look like a jerk, wow.
This being the case, it is indeed a closet in which it is convenient for many to hide to avoid prejudices and explanations. Who are the daring ones who have come out of their shadow? Today we show here a few brave ones. They don't hate traveling or knowing what's happening in the world, but they don't want to participate in mainstream tourism or (some of) all the deaths it leaves along the way, such as gentrification, unleashed consumerism and pollution.
But first, a warning. Of the many phobias that plague us human beings, traveling is the driving force behind one of them: hodophobia. It can be motivated by the fear of flying or driving, but also by the fact of moving away from the usual environment and being left at the risk of risks and uncertainty. Caesar Augustus himself, the first Roman emperor, avoided unnecessary travel and prioritized land travel over sea travel. Just in case.
Insubmission!
None of our interviewees suffers from hodophobia. Their reasons for not traveling, or not doing so as dictated by current uses and customs, are due to other reasons: a certain social insubordination to which in some cases is added a determined political opposition.
Of the reasons that exist to get out of the travel mainstream, some are being analyzed by the industry itself. OBS Business School professor Mario Sorribas, director of the Tourism Trends report, explains that a certain fatigue has been detected in travelers: "The overload of options to choose from stresses, especially those who want to spend as little as possible, and also those who no longer want to feel travel as an experience of accelerated consumption: many photos, a lot of spending, many places, little rest." Getting out of the mainstream is no longer so rare: "Today's society is very plural and the profile of the tourist has become atomized. Many are looking for less toxic trips that give them something. For one it will be a very exclusive destination and for another, going to a town to grow watermelons. Tourism is beginning to experience a kind of counterculture," he concludes.
Blanca Lacasa (54 years old) is a journalist and writer (The Horrible Daughters, The Accident). His speech, he acknowledges, is neither political nor activist. "I speak from a personal perspective and from the privilege of having been to many places; that's why I don't want to be categorical. I don't like to travel far away, to places where you don't know anyone, pack giant suitcases, see things without stopping... I neither enjoy it nor does it go with my philosophy," she maintains. And I sum it up like this: "I prefer those distances that can be traveled by train." He prefers to repeat destinations, go to places he knows by heart, visit friends who live abroad and follow the routines of the locals. One of his rituals when he travels is to go to the movies, even if he doesn't understand the language, to the markets, to the neighborhood bars, to the bookstores... "I'm more interested in them than going to a museum and seeing it running around. Leisure has become something productive. We make lists of places we've traveled to and even books we've read. Instead of being fun, it's stressful," he adds. If you visit a city several times, he says, you don't have the pressure to make the most of it and you can go see an exhibition unrelated to the tourist attractions.
Badly seen
She has also felt the weight of prejudice. "Before, it was difficult to confess it, because you looked like a timid, bored, with no taste for diversity... Is it imperative to travel to be someone who is open? I always have an active curious mode and for that it is equally useful to go to the countryside with someone who raises sheep. Everyone expects you to be amazed by trips to the other side of the world. I have experienced it with a certain shame, but there are more and more of us," she says. And from that dissident group he quotes Esty Quesada, a YouTuber known as Soy una pringada (32 years old). "When I heard it I thought: 'I'm not alone, it's just not our thing,'" Lacasa concludes.
For those who don't know her, this Basque content creator is not known for her duplicity. Rather because of a speech sparse in ornaments, epathetic and comfortable in displeasure. A little over three years ago he published a video on his channel in which he dropped one pearl after the other. This is an excerpt: "I hate traveling. It's boring. I hate it. Museums are not that interesting and they can also be seen on Google. I don't care about the Louvre, Prague, the Gardens of Versailles or the pyramids. I love wasting time when I travel and sometimes I prefer to be in the room with my cell phone rather than kicking around a place. What's wrong, is it a crime?" he added in a provocative tone.
That being the case, we asked Soy una pringada if her opinion is the same. And it is, more or less. "I like to travel to places that interest me, not to the cities that everyone says you have to see. Having these tastes seems like the most logical thing in the world to me," he answers. The destinations she refers to, for example, are "the poorest towns in the US", where she looks for rarities almost like a collector: "Like the biggest boot in the world, which is in a store in Minnesota" or the Columbine High School (Colorado), infamous for the school shooting that in 1999 left 15 dead, including the students who carried out the murders.
Any trips in the offing this summer? we asked. "I will return to the United States. My idea is to visit the Bible Belt: Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana... The only thing I prepare in advance is the plane. When I arrive, I take a rental car and improvise. The uncertainty doesn't scare me at all," he concludes.
Travelers versus tourists
It has already been written before against the standardization of the traveling experience and the social mandate that leads us to tourist so as not to fail on vacation. At the end of the 19th century, the writer and philosopher G. K. Chesterton said that "the traveler sees what he sees; the tourist, what he has come to see", alluding to the difference that separates these two almost identical categories: the first does not invade and is open to surprise; The second, as if he belonged to a termite infestation, seeks to check the list with which he left home. The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, in the Book of Desasosiego, portrays himself as a true hater of travel. He says: "I hate new ways of living and unknown places. The idea of traveling makes me nauseous (...). To travel it is enough to exist. Only an extreme poverty of the imagination can justify that one has to move to feel." Another writer, philosopher and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was quite lazy in the 19th century when he referred to travel as a fool's paradise. He didn't go around with many metaphors.
And finally: a couple of years ago, fellow philosopher Agnes Callard published Arguments Against Traveling in The New Yorker magazine. Another daring one. In the text, he denies that travel makes us better or more noble. He also maintains that stating that one loves to travel says absolutely nothing about anyone, since we all repeat that phrase like an overwhelming mantra. Another of his reflections hits hard, because it puts us in front of the mirror: Callard points out that while others seem like tourists to us, we self-identify as travelers. More was missing.
In our magazine last June, we published the results of a survey on travel and vacations, carried out by Sigma Dos. The data confirmed Callard: almost 97% of Spaniards like to travel and 60% pack their bags for pleasure between two and five times a year. And, attention, 52% consider it a right. Furthermore, 85% reject overcrowding and the same percentage of Spaniards want our tourism to not harm the environment. But, in the end... we leave.
The dictatorship of photogenicity
Azahara Alonso is a writer and philosopher (38 years old) and in Gozo (Siruela, 2023) she addresses issues such as sustainability and hyperproductivity, also during vacations. "The tourist is a worker carrying out his work on his days off. We prepare trips a lot to fulfill everything, we share geolocation, we take photos, reviews, we value beaches... I am Asturian and I have seen how they have given one a bad grade because it had a lot of water. It is insane," he says. "All that is working. I like to stay on vacation, which is not synonymous with traveling, but with resting," he adds.
This productivity, increased by social networks, even affects our destiny based on its photogenicity. According to a study by the booking portal Trainline, 40% of Spaniards choose their trips influenced by the content they can generate, which others then consume and try to replicate.
Azahara Alonso delves into the stereotyped and uniform concept of the traveling experience, where between imperative and imperative there is no room for surprise, much less for adventure: "We want to put the pin on the map and see what we have to see and do what we have to do, but at the same time, we want to be part of the places we go to and we even want to stay in their homes," she adds.
At this point, the criticism of tourism as a political position is sharpened, one that points out its influence on the gentrification of cities and their climate footprint. "There are luxury trips that are those made by those who have always been able to go out. Then there are the cheap ones, which even have their own terminals (and worse) in some airports," says Alonso.
And here the concept of tourism as an aspirational fiction is crossed: "If we live with a certain precariousness but we can travel three days outside relatively frequently, we are not really aware of salaries or the difficulty of accessing housing." "I don't blame those who travel. It's an aesthetic and friendly escape route, but we let ourselves be fooled," he asserts.
No to tourism
Alonso, in addition to writing about the subject, practices by example. "I don't do tourism. If I have to travel, I prefer the train to the plane and something basic for me is that I don't stay in houses. Houses are for living. If a plan with friends includes staying in a tourist apartment, I withdraw. In that sense, I am completely out of the closet," she says. She, who has lived in the capital, confirms herself in that red line: "I have seen how Madrid is and in Asturias we are moving towards that touristification. It's terrifying what you see coming," he concludes.
The very high concentration of travelers per square centimeter in cities like Barcelona and Venice, where the unloading of cruise ships puts even more stress on the locals' routine, has been the source of social protest due to so many visits. These movements respond to the slogan Tourists, go home, although, if taken literally, Spain's economic engine would seize. With 97 million travelers, our country is the second in international arrivals (behind France), tourism contributes more than 12.5% to GDP and supports almost 13% of total employment. But for the residents of the most saturated areas, life becomes a little more difficult and... they protest. A few weeks ago, an association in Mallorca distributed a manual to boycott businesses linked to tourism with actions such as blocking apartment locks and throwing paint at some businesses. This discontent reaches the ears of tourists and thus, last year the CNN Travel section published an article with this headline: Guide to the areas of Spain that are not fed up with tourists.
