In 2025 and into 2026, Spain's most visited coastal regions have become synonymous with a different kind of headline: residents marching against tourism saturation, water pistol protests in Barcelona, hotel development moratoriums across the Balearic Islands, and city councils in Malaga and Valencia drafting emergency regulations to control short-term rental density.
The anti-tourism backlash is real, it is spreading, and it reflects a genuine deterioration in quality of life for local communities in destinations that have been hollowed out by the economics of mass visitor volumes.
This makes Palamos all the more remarkable.
The small Catalan fishing town on the Costa Brava — population roughly 18,000, regular cruise ship calls, two hours by car from Barcelona — has maintained a quality of local life that its more famous neighbors have long since lost. A recent post on r/travel collecting 339 upvotes and 10 comments captures the experience of a traveler who stopped expecting much and came away genuinely surprised.
"Despite being a cruise ship port, I felt Palamos retained its local charm and warmth," the traveler wrote. "A mix of local feel with holiday vibe."
For anyone who has spent time in Lloret de Mar — where the local fishing economy has been entirely replaced by a British and Scandinavian package-holiday infrastructure, leaving nothing that resembles authentic Catalan life — this distinction matters enormously.
What Palamos Has That Its Neighbors Don't
The town's working fishing harbor operates independently of tourism. Every morning, the fishing fleet returns and the wholesale fish auction at the Confraria de Pescadors — one of the oldest on the Costa Brava — processes the catch for distribution to restaurants and markets across the region. Visitors can watch the auction in the late afternoon, and the experience has not been commodified into a ticketed tourist attraction.
The town market functions as a genuine local provisioning hub rather than a craft vendor showcase. Seafood restaurants in the harbor area serve the local catch at prices that reflect local purchasing power rather than tourist income — a distinction that becomes obvious when compared to the €35 paella tourist traps of Lloret and Salou.
The beaches — particularly Platja de Palamos and Cala Margarida — are clean, well-maintained, and accessible without the reservation systems and crowd management infrastructure that larger Costa Brava resorts have implemented to manage overuse.
The Girona Connection
Perhaps the most practical aspect of Palamos as a base: Girona is less than 40 minutes by car, and the combination of the two represents one of the more underrated itineraries on the Iberian Peninsula. Girona's Jewish Quarter (El Call), medieval city walls, and cathedral rival anything in Barcelona with roughly one-tenth the crowd pressure. The traveler's trip report specifically highlighted Girona as a highlight worth prioritizing.
The Overtourism Context
Catalan tourism authority data shows the Costa Brava receiving over 10 million visitors annually, with that figure concentrated in the peak summer months and in a handful of marquee towns. The disparity in visitor pressure between a saturated town like Lloret de Mar and a more authentically operating community like Palamos reflects the difference between destinations that have surrendered their local economic base to tourism and those that have maintained parallel economies keeping residents invested in the character of their town.
This is the mechanism by which some Mediterranean villages retain their soul while others don't. It's not accident or luck — it's the presence or absence of local industries beyond hospitality. Palamos still has a working port. Lloret de Mar does not.
When to Go
The cruise ship visits that define peak-day visitor pressure in Palamos are concentrated in July and August. Shoulder season — April through June and September through October — provides the warmth and beach access that motivates a Costa Brava visit without the crowd pressure that even modest cruise arrivals can create in a small town. The official Costa Brava tourism website provides cruise arrival calendars for major ports, allowing travelers to time visits around ship-free days even in peak season.
For travelers approaching Spain with legitimate concern about contributing to the overtourism pressures that are generating community backlash, choosing Palamos over Lloret, or Girona over Barcelona's most saturated zones, is a meaningful way to distribute visitor impact toward communities that can still absorb it.
