Decoding middle-class protest against low-cost nocturnal tourism in Madrid

Abstract

Nightlife scenes in central Madrid have been profoundly affected due to the expansion of tourist-oriented night-time leisure activities during the last three decades. This paper examines a range of tensions that have recently appeared in the La Latina neighbourhood due to the conflictual coexistence between the slow and locally-oriented everyday practices remaining in this territoir and the rapid colonisation of this central quarter of Madrid by neoliberal economies of the ‘Tourist City’. Particularly, we focus on some long-term, middle-class residents who reproduce exclusionary narratives against the rapid expansion of low cost tourist-oriented nightlife, while advocating a civilised and distinctive tourism. We argue this may be seen as a renaissance of a sanitised ‘middle-class culture’ created by the fascist regime in the second half of the twentieth century. Recent middle-class’ protests in Spain’s largest cities hide a new struggle about ‘who is legitimised’ and ‘who not’ to reclaim the re-appropriation of the city centre.