Shorouk Express
The graffitied Osborne bull has gone viral on social media networks due to its harsh wording (in English) and its topical nature, as Spain is currently going through a housing crisis, which has been partly blamed on the influence wealthy foreign buyers have had on the property market.
Action group SOS Residents, who are concerned about the impact of mass tourism and property speculation on Mallorca were one of the accounts to post the image, and they received a lot of comments from locals praising the message with hearts and clapping emojis.
But many of the commenters were actually blaming locals themselves for selling their properties to rich outsiders.
One commenter wrote: “Thank you rich foreign property buyers for letting us live a modern life without hard work, based on the selling of properties that our grandfathers bought for nothing and now we sell for a 1000x price of that. It also allows us to avoid any long term investments in industry or crafts and, on top of everything, we can blame YOU for the lack of properties available to our own people because it is way easier than admitting that we are selling our land cheap and are incapable of admitting our own guilt in all this.”
Another wrote: “The Mallorcans are the ones responsible, with the undisputed support of the estate agents!” while another agreed “Those who sell like foreigners’ money!!”
“I would say the fault lies with those who allow it, that is, the law, right?” added another.
As the only one of its kind left on the island, this particular Osborne bull has regularly been used as a message board for all kinds of protests and demands.
It’s located on a hill next to the road from Palma to Manacor (Ma-15), between Algaida and Montuïri and used to be an advertising billboard for Osborne sherry, like several others located across the country.
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This is not the first time that graffiti in Spain has been directed against foreigners, but it is a different kind of messaging to that blaming tourists and Airbnb.
For years Barcelona has been full of “Tourist Go Home” messages scrawled on walls and more recently other cities have begun to follow suit.
Just last year alone messages appeared across Barcelona and Madrid with slogans like “It’s Tourist Hunting Season,” “Tourists Go Home” and “Fuck Airbnb”.
And in Málaga, stickers began to appear saying “Go f*cking home” and “This used to be my home” ― placed in tourist areas where locals once lived.
In Seville, Airbnb key boxes were covered in faeces.
READ ALSO: Have Spain’s anti-tourism protests turned nasty?
Despite the apparent hate directed at tourists, most of the anger among Spanish residents is actually about housing, as were many of the anti-tourism protests throughout the country in 2024.
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Locals are being priced out of central areas and can no longer afford soaring rents and housing prices.
Tourist rental companies like Airbnb are partly being blamed for this because landlords can make a lot more money from vacation rentals than they can renting out long term, meaning less properties on the market and higher rents.
According to property portal Idealista, Palma de Mallorca is one of only seven provincial capitals in the whole of Spain which set new all-time highs for property prices last year.
Santander Bank backs this up with stats ranking the top four most expensive cities in Spain – San Sebastián with a price of €5,570 per square metre, followed by Madrid (€4,756 /m2), Barcelona (€4,561 /m2) and Palma (€4,308 /m2).
READ ALSO: Renewed calls for Mallorca to ban non-residents from buying property
The Balearic Islands also continue to hold their position as the region with the highest prices in the luxury segment. According to a Tecnitasa report, the highest recorded value in the past year exceeded €50.6 million in Pollença.
In January 2025, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that his government was considering both a 100 percent tax on non-resident third country nationals as they “mainly buy to speculate”, or even completely banning them from buying Spanish properties if they have no family ties to Spain.
In April 2025, Spain’s golden visa scheme – which for over a decade has given residency to non-EU nationals who purchased Spanish homes worth at least €500,000 – will be scrapped.
READ ALSO: 8 stats to understand Spain’s restrictions on foreign property buyers
