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Should Spain consider a degrowth in tourism? This is the view of many people who are angry about drunken holidaymakers taking over cities and their attractions, as this bitter tweet from a Barcelonian shows.

Spain, once a country where tourism meant money and development, is reaching a tipping point. It’s not that it doesn’t want tourists any more, but some places have reached a limit.

In certain locations the government is now calling for ‘quality tourism’ instead of ‘drunken tourism’, which activists say is a euphemism for ‘rich people tourism’ and won’t solve the problems that the tourism industry causes to nature, cities and rising house prices.

The blame lies not with the tourists (according to one report, even the tourists in Barcelona think there are too many of themselves), but with the local administrations: they opt for ever-increasing numbers of tourists, instead of the less popular measures of restricting business.

What can they do? Control the time visitors can spend at monuments and sights, refuse to grant new licences for rental accommodation and, in extreme cases, limit the number of tourists.

It’s a few minutes after noon on the beach at Hungary’s holiday destination Lake Balaton and some families are already packing their stuff to return to their small rented houses. Although there are many food stalls and restaurants, they opt for a home-cooked lunch to save money.

The beach – lined with towels and colourful inflatable unicorns in the grass – becomes deserted for a few hours. The noise of children playing, adults gossiping under the willow trees and waves hitting the rocks disappears. When families return in the afternoon, many walk with cooler bags in hand, bringing sandwiches and cans of beer.

“We are a family of four. Even with a family discount, the daily entrance fee to the official beach is eight euros. One lángos (deep-fried dough with cheese and sour cream) costs five euros. I would probably have to spend 50 euros there every day,” explains a beachgoing dad who is staying at the free beach of Siófok, a bit further away from town.

In a country where the average salary is 972 euro per month and inflation in June was still above 20 per cent, that is a lot of money.

“For the same price, I can go and swim in the sea,” explains 39-year-old Anna on why she chose Croatia this summer. Such costs leave the future uncertain for Lake Balaton.

“We are experiencing one of the strongest tourist seasons of all time.”

– Kiril Pecakov, mayor of the lake town of Ohrid.

Failing to be by the sea is the biggest weakness of North Macedonia’s landmark Lake Ohrid, compared to other Balkan hotspots. But this season, scared off by the astronomical price hikes in coastal resorts, many have given Ohrid a try.

According to local mayor Kiril Pecakov most of the guests have come from the Netherlands, UK, Poland, Turkey and Serbia.

An ancient town, breathtaking scenery and one of the oldest and clearest lakes in the world, known as ‘The Macedonian Sea’, does not sound so bad after all.

Despite the heat and wildfires, Greece is still one of the most popular holiday destinations in Europe. But Greeks themselves can barely afford a holiday in their own country.

“I chose to have a vacation in my city, taking a few days off work in August,” says Katerina, a freelancer who lives and works in Athens.

According to the Greek Institute of Retail Consumer Goods, one in two Greeks will not holiday this summer, while four in ten who intend to go will cut their spending by more than 50 per cent.

They decide to stay in friends’ or family’s summer houses (26 per cent) and, according to the Business and Retail Association of Greece, save money on essential goods and services. 45 per cent of Greek consumers prefer to save money by cooking during their holidays, and only 16 per cent buy souvenirs or other products such as clothes or jewellery.

“To go to a Greek island is an elusive dream,” says Marita Meleti, a private employee.

In popular destinations such as Mykonos, Santorini, Sifnos, Paros and Milos prices start at 120 euros for a double room. The costs of a ferry ticket to island destinations can often exceed the accommodation cost.

MEGA TV channel reports that a family of four travelling to the island of Paros in July has to spend around 400 euros for economy class tickets. By car, the amount will exceed 600 euros. The cheapest accommodation will cost around 900 euros for six nights. Add to that the costs for food, entertainment, and entry to the beaches, and the total amount will reach 3,000 euros. With an average salary of 1,176 euro per month in Greece this means a significant burden on a family budget.

This year, the figures for domestic tourism are at the same level as in 2022. After almost two years of the pandemic and health restrictions, Greeks hugely needed to vacation, but three in four Greeks said that they would reduce their holidays due to financial constraints. One in four in 2022 said that they would not go on holiday at all.

Will an eco-activist save Germany’s left? On 17 July, the leadership of “Die Linke” announced that Carola Rackete would be one of the party’s four top candidates for the 2024 European Parliament elections. This was nothing short of a coup.

Rackete rose to international fame in 2019, when she captained the Mediterranean rescue boat “Sea Watch 3” into the port of Lampedusa, carrying 53 migrants, although Italy’s authorities had forbidden her to dock. Furthermore, Rackete is a climate researcher and activist.

For years, “Die Linke” has been struggling, mainly because of internal conflicts. On the one hand, it includes young academic leftists from the cities, for whom climate change, LGBTIQ rights and the support of refugees are important. On the other hand, the party contains the older generation of leftists, who want to see more focus on workers’ rights.

Many of the latter are attracted to the rather controversial former leader of the party’s faction, Sahra Wagenknecht, who has polemicised against the younger generation for being “lifestyle-leftists” and strongly criticised Angela Merkel for her 2015 decision to allow refugees into Germany. Wagenknecht’s public statements often openly contradict her party’s policy. These conflicts have caused a loss of voters and members. In recent months, Wagenknecht has openly flirted with the idea of forming her own party.

For a long time it looked as if the party’s top brass wouldn’t be able to resolve these conflicts. However, on 10 June, the leadership asked Wagenknecht to resign from Bundestag. This marked a turning point.

The nomination of Carola Rackete is another milestone in this new direction. With a focus on topics such as climate protection and open borders, Rackete stands for exactly the opposite of Sahra Wagenknecht.

“Pedro Sánchez is not just a friend or a partner, he is someone with whom I have worked very closely in recent years, in the ‘Iberian exception’ for energy prices, or the battle we’ve fought together to create a programme for the structural transformation of our economies.”

– António Costa

In contrast to many countries in Europe, the far right will remain out of government in the Iberian Peninsula – at least for now.

In Portugal’s last election in 2022, António Costa’s Socialist Party won a majority to form the government, but over the past year it has been criticised from both the left and the right. Cases of corruption, inflation and a lack of vigour in tackling a housing crisis have left 52% of Portuguese saying the government has performed “bad or very badly”.

Could this mean that Portugal will move to the right in the next elections? If so, how far? 63% of Portuguese people don’t want an electoral pact between the centre right party PSD and the far-right Chega. Luís Montenegro, leader of the PSD, confirmed this weekend that such a pact is not his intention.

At the moment, the Iberian exception stands.

Now that the 2024 EU elections are getting closer, one question haunts me: has a progressive alternative to the rampant right-wing really been tried? This further obsesses me due to the place from which I write, Meloniland.

Even before she became Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni negotiated a tactical alliance with the European People’s Party; this so-called moderate right has broken the cordon sanitaire and normalised the extreme wing. Europe could shift to the right in 2024. Faced with this scenario, one would expect an effective and united response from the left.

When the left joins forces, it works. In Spain, the Sanchez-Diaz duo counterbalanced the surge toward the right. At the European Parliament, the Socialists, the Greens, the Left and part of the Liberals managed to form a majority to defend the Green Deal against right-wing attacks. The French left-wing “Nupes” alliance had a good debut in last summer’s legislative elections. The struggle for social and climate justice is mobilising voters.

But political leaders are reluctant to act accordingly. At an EU level, the Socialist group’s president Iratxe García Pérez is still hoping for a grand coalition with the EPP, even though its leader, Manfred Weber, is the normaliser of Meloni and the extreme right in Europe.

Even at the epicentre of the far right, in Italy, the alternative appears weak and disorganised. Were it not for the internal divisions in her opposition, Meloni would not have won the government so easily.

But now that we are witnessing the Orbanisation of Italy, the country’s Democratic Party has been forced to change: the open race for the leadership was won by Elly Schlein, who promised to give the left a new boost. The proposal for a minimum wage, supported by all opposition forces, is a first positive signal in the Spanish style.

It remains to be seen to what extent the left will be able to generate new momentum.

Nine political parties with the words ‘communist’, ‘socialist’ and ‘left’ in their names have been banned in Ukraine since its independence in 1991. Six of them were forced to suspend their activities after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

In a post-Soviet state, Ukraine’s leftists often have ties to Russia and even promote a pro-Moscow agenda. Now this position has backfired on them.

The ricochet has also hit Ukrainian society: now there are no political parties with well-established leftist policies. Centrist and right-wing parties don’t tend to pay enough attention to issues such as social equality or workers’ rights. Therefore, quality discussions on these topics are currently not on Ukraine’s political agenda.

In the general elections on 23 July the Spanish right party won the most seats in the Parliament, but without a majority to form a government. This leads to a deadlock or the re-launch of a left-wing-led government with the support of a myriad of regional parties. Jaime Coulbois, Spanish political analyst, explains why.

So the results in the Spanish elections surprised many, including the pollsters. What happened?

Before I start, a parenthesis: on Sunday, I was positive about an absolute majority for the [right-wing] People’s Party (PP) and [far-right] Vox. But it seems that the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) government has been able to resist: the PSOE’s management has borne fruit, and the fear of political pacts with the far-right Vox helped the PSOE to get the “tactical vote”.

If the nationalists parties like Bildu (País Vasco independence supporters, far left) or the Catalan nationalists had made strong statements during the campaign, it would have made things more difficult for PM Pedro Sánchez. Without that, and with the nationalists seeming more rational than Vox, it’s more complicated for the right to get its narrative about the nationalists across.

When Pedro Sánchez won in 2019, he heralded a ‘red wave’ in Spain and in Europe. But after his defeat in the local elections in May, analysts talked of a ‘change of cycle’ to the right that didn’t materialise.

There is no contradiction in the fact that there is a social tendency towards the right, even the far right, but it’s still not enough to win a majority to form a government, especially in a polarised society like Spain. We are seeing attitudes that we would never have seen a few years ago: from Spanish nationalism to Francoist remembrance.

How was this avoided in Spain, when we see it all around Europe?

This discourse that previously was hidden has increased in public. But that’s not incompatible with the general public opinion. Spain is an exceptionally tolerant country regarding LGBT rights, and the immigration problem is very different from the rest of Europe: our migration does not have the strong cultural, linguistic and religious barriers that are in other European countries, and tensions with immigration may not have surfaced yet.

It was about 4am in 2010 when our infantry squad of ten soldiers was preparing to ambush the passing “enemy” – another set of Estonian conscripts on the country’s military service which is mandatory for men.

Everyone hiding in that damp and dark forest was dead tired due to intense training. We all suffered from sleep deprivation and most of us felt cold. I was assigned with a Ksp 58 machine gun. I teamed up with Andres, a mate who was responsible for feeding ammunition to the 1.2 metre, 12 kilogramme beast of a weapon that fires up to 16 hellishly loud rounds per second.

We had to stay alert, but I was barely awake. Andres, who was next to the gun barrel, had fallen asleep. Then a soundless signal was given to us: open fire! Alas, Andres was shaken by the sound of the machine gun firing (blanks, of course) right next to him. Poor Andres. He woke up to an ambush.

Thankfully it wasn’t real, in the same way a war in our part of the world did not seem real in 2010.

I thought of experiences like this when I was in Vilnius last week covering the NATO summit. One of the key topics for our readers at Estonia’s leading news portal Delfi were the defence plans for our region. These are the same ones I will follow as an infantry platoon commander, if it should become necessary for reserve units to fight for the defence of Estonia. New reserve units have been assembled in light of the enhanced aggressiveness from Russia.

It’s been thirteen years since my service, but I will go back to the woods in September for a ten-day mandatory training period. Thousands of others will be there. We’ll have to stay more alert this time, because the threat feels much more real.