Less Tourism, More Life defends the manual of direct action and assures that it does not promote violence

PalmaThe platform Menys Turisme, Més Vida has defended the controversial direct action manual disseminated this Tuesday, which includes proposals for action against tourist housing, establishments that it considers responsible for gentrification processes, and other elements linked to the tourism model. In a few hours, the manual has sparked numerous reactions from employers' associations such as HABTUR, CAEB, Pimem, and Pimeco, but also from unions such as CCOO and UGT, which unanimously condemn the motive of the initiative.

The document has generated controversy due to the actions it proposes, but the entity maintains that it is a tool to justify the mobilizations it promotes and denies that it calls for violence. The platform's spokesperson, Pere Joan Femenia, has acknowledged that the publication "has been controversial," but has framed the initiative within the growing social unrest in the face of a tourism model that, he states, "does not change." In this regard, he explained that the platform decided to "raise the tone a bit" due to the lack of institutional response.

"Since there is no change in direction, because we are ignored, we decided to take this step," he stated. According to Femenia, the decision was agreed upon by the platform's internal bodies, both by the coordination group and by the open and closed assemblies, where both social unrest and strategies to channel it are debated. The spokesperson also wanted to clarify that the manual is a personal initiative of the internal assembly of Less Tourism, More Life and not of the entities that are part of the platform.

In this regard, he specified that the GOB is not part of it and admitted that this situation may generate "a bit of confusion," especially because the platform's actions coexist with the unitary mobilizations it organizes, such as the demonstration on July 26. Femenia pointed out that the platform has autonomy to promote its own initiatives and stressed that the actions they assume and justify are exclusively those they publish on their official channels. As he explained, the manual "aims to justify our actions, which we consider legitimate," although he acknowledged that they understand that in a way this may cause some confusion.

Regarding the content of the document, the spokesperson defended that the actions proposed therein, "cannot constitute a crime as long as it is proven that there has been no violence." In this regard, he rejected that the platform encourages violent behavior. "We do not encourage violence, but direct action," he clarified. However, the spokesperson argued that the organization also considers evictions and the expulsion of residents from neighborhoods as forms of violence and defended actions against advertising billboards of the hotel employers' association and key boxes for illegal tourist rentals, agents that favor speculation and not actions against vulnerable people or groups, he pointed out.