Thousands of protesters marched through Barcelona Monday to express anger at mass tourism and its impacts on Spain’s most visited city. Bystanders dining in restaurants in the popular La Barceloneta neighborhood were soaked when some protesters sprayed them with water guns. 

Video showed diners being forced to change tables at some restaurants to escape the protests, while other restaurants were symbolically taped off by the demonstrators.

Carrying banners reading “Tourists go home,” protesters called for a reduction in the number of foreign visitors to Barcelona, stopping in front of hotels and restaurants to confront tourists.

“I have nothing against tourism, but here in Barcelona we are suffering from an excess of tourism that has made our city unliveable,” one of the demonstrators told the French news agency AFP.

Local authorities say the cost of housing has risen 68% in the Spanish city over the past decade, becoming one of the main points of contention for the disgruntled residents.

“The last years, the city has turned completely for tourists, and what we want is a city for citizens and not in service of tourists,” another protester told a Reuters news camera.   

In June, Mayor of Barcelona Jaume Collboni said that by 2028, he would stop renewing the thousands of tourist licenses that permit landlords to rent out accommodation to foreign visitors. The move would make the homes, which are currently advertised on platforms such as Airbnb, available to locals, according to Collboni.

More than 12 million tourists visited the city, famed for sights such as the Sagrada Familia basilica, last year alone, according to local authorities.

The latest protest comes after similar large-scale demonstrations in other tourist hotspots across Spain. A protest in Málaga, in the southern part of the country, drew some 15,000 people to rally against over-tourism in June, while the island of Palma de Mallorca saw more than 10,000 people march against the impact of mass tourism in May.

According to Spain’s national statistics office INE, the first five months of 2024 alone saw more than 33 millions tourists visit the country, which represents an increase of 13.6% compared to the previous year.

Spain isn’t the only European nation grappling with the impact of tourism on the local population. Earlier this year, Venice, Italy became the first city to impose a fee on daily visitors.

A woman was found dead inside the belly of a snake after it swallowed her whole in central Indonesia last week, police said, the second python killing in the province in a month.

Siriati, 36, had gone missing after she left her house Tuesday morning to buy medicine for her sick child, police said Wednesday, prompting relatives to launch a search.

Her husband Adiansa, 30, found her slippers and pants on the ground about 500 meters from their house in Siteba village, South Sulawesi province.

“Shortly after that, he spotted a snake, about 10 meters from the path. The snake was still alive,” local police chief Idul, who like many Indonesians has one name, told AFP.

Village secretary Iyang told AFP that Adiansa became suspicious after he noticed the python’s “very large” belly. He called the villagers to help cut open its stomach, where they found her body.

The fatal attack comes about a month after a woman was found dead inside the belly of a reticulated python in another district of South Sulawesi. Graphic video published by TMZ appeared to show the snake being cut open in a wooded area while more footage posted by the Daily Mail appeared to show the woman’s body being carried in a blanket past distressed villagers.

Deadly python attacks in recent years

Such incidents are considered extremely rare, but several people have been swallowed by pythons in recent years.

Last year residents in the province killed an eight-meter python, which was found strangling and eating one of the farmers in a village.

In 2022, a woman in Indonesia’s Jambi province was killed and swallowed whole by a python, the BBC reported, citing local media.

A 54-year-old woman was found dead in 2018 inside a seven-meter python in Southeast Sulawesi’s Muna town.

The year before that, a farmer in West Sulawesi went missing before being found eaten alive by a four-meter python at a palm oil plantation. A six-minute video obtained by CBS News showed villagers slicing open the python’s carcass to reveal the legs and torso of the dead victim, named Akbar.

The reticulated python is the longest snake in the world, according to London’s Natural History Museum. They are native to Southern Asia and can grow to be more than 20 feet long.

The longest reticulated python ever found in the wild was discovered in 1912, according to the museum, and was measured to be nearly 33 feet long – “more than half the length of a bowling lane and makes this snake longer than a giraffe is tall.” 

Zoo Atlanta, which houses reticulated pythons, says the snakes “have a reputation for being aggressive.”

A new survey of an iconic ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece has revealed new treasures — and the remains of a second sunken vessel — more than 2,000 years after it plunged to the bottom of the Aegean Sea.

During a recent expedition at the site of the Antikythera shipwreck, marine archaeologists uncovered about 300 new objects, including 18 marble statue fragments,  a previously undiscovered part of the vessel’s hull and the remains of a wooden ship that was “beneath the crushed cargo it was carrying,” the Greek Ministry of Culture announced last week.

The Antikythera shipwreck, which dates to the 1st century BC, was originally discovered in the Aegean Sea by sponge divers in 1900. In the decades since, researchers have tried to the identify human remains found in the wreck, as well as learn more details about the mysterious fate of the Roman-era ship.

The most recent survey, conducted from May 17 to June 20, revealed the wreckage of a second ship and new artworks, which scientists said triggered brand new questions.

“Was there only one ship involved in this ancient maritime tragedy? How exactly did the wreck happen? Did the human remains recovered in recent years belong to passengers or crew members?” the ministry wrote in a news release, which included seven images from the expedition.

The archaeologists, aided by exceptionally good weather conditions, were able to study two sites, Area A and Area B, which are more than 600 feet apart and over 150 feet below the water’s surface. Researchers said “the most important find” in Area A was a previously unseen part of the ship’s hull that combines important nautical features, including wooden planks and copper pins, which confirmed the exact orientation of the ancient ship.

“Through the ongoing comparative study of data, the question arises whether more than one ship sank during the same event in Antikythera,” the ministry said.

In Area B, archaeologists discovered pottery very similar to that recovered over the decades from the main wreck site — and further excavation confirmed the presence of the remains of a wooden ship, found under its crushed cargo.

At both sites, divers found marble fragments from sculptures, including several marble fingers, a part of a palm, and fragments of clothing. Researchers were able to determine that all the fragments were parts of different statues.

Divers also uncovered more than 200 ceramic fragments, including an oil lamp, a two-handled vase and table pottery.

The recent expedition, led by Angeliki G. Simosi and Lorenz Baumer, was part of the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece’s (ESAG) 2021-2025 research program, the ministry said. The site is perhaps most famous for the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, a mysterious device with interlocking gears that appears to be an “astronomical calculation machine of immense complexity,” according to Scientific American. It is often referred to as the world’s oldest analog computer.

Countless shipwrecks are scattered off the coast of Greece. Earlier this year, Greek researchers using Homer’s “Iliad” as a guide announced they found 10 shipwrecks, including one estimated to be more than 5,000 years old and another from the World War II era.