When the Adriatic becomes “the season,” everyone loses

mass tourism – From a beach on Pag to a ferry ramp in Mali Lošinj, the same logic keeps repeating: tourism treated as a machine that prizes “results” over human lives, culture over people, and profit over place. In a long, fierce reflection first published by Kultur Punkt, t

My husband and I are sitting on the beach at Šimuni on the island of Pag. The season hasn’t started yet. The shore is almost completely empty. I try not to think about anything, but it’s in vain.

A little further from us, a tanned woman with two small preschool children has found her spot. She’s brought her mother along as well. Her husband, I assume, stayed home. When people are stripped down at the seaside, it’s easy to categorize them by class. When you’re half-naked. all that remains are manners. and the way this woman carries herself tells me she would never take out a can of Slovenian Argeta pâté on the beach. She is tanned. but her children are covered in three layers of the strongest suncream and dressed from head to toe. They’re wearing little caps. The sun can’t even get close to them.

I feel a slight irritation, but since I live in Zagreb, I’m used to it. At least, that’s what I think until the youngest child starts wailing inconsolably because his mother has gone somewhere. The grandmother is helpless. It’s clear she’d rather be anywhere else. The child’s mother returns. She kneels and pulls her offspring into a tight embrace. She starts to rock him. Apart from a handful of Slovenian tourists. my husband and I are her only audience. yet she insists on the melodrama. She loudly repeats to the child a hundred times, suffocating him: ‘I will never leave you. Never!. Never!’.

I turn around to check whether HRT (Hrvatska radiotelevizija, Croatian Radiotelevision) has set up its cameras somewhere nearby, but there’s nothing in sight. The woman rocks the child like a rag doll. Her mise-en-scène is the Dalmatian pebbles and a waitress in the background.

Just at the moment when you’d expect a grand red curtain to drop onstage, the ramp of the Lastovo, a ten-ton vessel operated by Croatia’s national ferry company Jadrolinija, crashes down 30 kilometres to the west in Mali Lošinj, crushing three crew members. They all die. End scene.

An invasive species

In her 1988 essay A Small Place, the Antiguan-American author Jamaica Kincaid writes that an “ugly thing” appears when you become a tourist—something that “will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you.”

Kincaid argues that every person is a potential tourist, though some are too poor to ever become one. The essay is about the Caribbean, but the author insists it applies just as well to the blue Adriatic. Tourism, she writes, is a universal evil.

For Croatia, though, she says the idea of “tourist” has to be revised. It’s not enough to stick to the usual distinction between domestic and foreign visitors. as the media have trained us to think. The woman on the beach is a tourist. My husband and I are also tourists on the Adriatic. But it’s also easy to recognize Jadrolinija’s CEO. David Sopta. as “a piece of rubbish pausing here and there”—especially because he is affiliated with the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).

The author turns the accusation outward: aren’t the domestic executives who are destroying the shipbuilding industry and ravaging the coastline and forests the most despised kind of outsiders?. When they ruin one location. she writes. their company simply relocates them somewhere else so they can continue their destruction undisturbed. They never take responsibility. They never face consequences. Like tourists, they are an invasive species.

She doesn’t stop at corporate leadership. She points to the armed and arrogant Italian tourists who come to Croatia for poaching. but she asks why that attention can’t extend to Croatian power as well—naming former Croatian MP Josipa Rimac as a “textbook example of a privileged tourist” who. in her view. has no regard for the coastline. She says the well-known HDZ politician has shown far more interest in partying and sailing than she has in the well-being of Croatia.

Around Rimac. she stacks other figures described as politicians “merely using Croatia”: former president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović. MP Ante Sanader. and former EC vice president/European Commissioner for Mediterranean Dubravka Šuica. Each, the author writes, fits Kincaid’s description: “an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish.”.

Pillaging paradise

The author claims the “piece of rubbish” can be recognized by one thing: an inability to imagine the Croatian coast without the union of mass tourism and illegal development. In her telling, this system exploits the coastline for profit and uses Zagreb for money laundering.

When she sees an expensive car with Split plates in Zagreb—something she says is becoming increasingly common—she interprets the driver the same way she does the beach scene: as an impostor, exposed in Dalmatia as well as in Zagreb because the person is “just another outsider.”

She describes catamarans and ferries drifting around the Adriatic islands like old scrap metal, while executives buy brand-new luxury cars. She says public infrastructure crumbles as families spend three-month-long summers in top-tier, private hotels and villas.

Down south. she argues. the damage is visible in building and sound: every drystone wall is slowly turning into reinforced concrete; construction noise “hammers its way” into people’s heads. At the same time. she writes. local lowlifes sell inherited land for euros to foreigners so they can afford better cars. and perhaps even to Brussels. “to become foreigners.”.

She points to Split’s property price, saying it climbed to €8,500 per square metre not on its own, but because people “let that ramp fall.”

That is the line that ties back to the crash. The accident that killed three sailors, she insists, wasn’t the end of Jadrolinija’s problems—though she says subsequent incidents unfolded without further loss of life.

Each time she returns to the crash. she says. she is brought back to remarks made by David Sopta. who of course remained at the helm of Jadrolinija. Instead of stepping down. she reports. he said he was sorry that the death of the sailors had “simply slightly overshadowed” the company’s good results—namely the acquisition of five new catamarans. She says he also insisted that the focus should be on the tourist season because it is the company’s main mission.

For her, the language is dehumanizing. Three human lives become a secondary issue compared to five new vessels. Within the company’s hierarchy, she writes, “results, mission and the season” take precedence over workers. Profit is more valuable than human life—the message of HDZ cadres.

By now. “season” has become a byword for robbery. she writes—but not the kind everyone thinks of when they hear about the Adriatic coast. She asks readers to forget viral photos of outrageously high restaurant bills for coffee and meals sold as news every summer. Tourism, in her view, is the organized looting of the Croatian coastline.

She says journalists who would write about “the organized criminal enterprise known as ‘the season’” wouldn’t need to sip espresso on Dubrovnik’s elegant main street Stradun. They’d need to go after the real culprits in Zagreb. But she argues that since only the poor stay home in the summer to contemplate life. everyone else can’t wait to become cheerful tourists—including left-leaning intellectuals and journalists. Every summer. Zagreb abandons its political and cultural engagement to lounge on the beach. and she describes how difficult it becomes to write critically from a sun lounger.

So she calls for winter—the moment she says everyone is equally depressed—to deal with mass tourism, from which no one has ever truly had a break.

When tourism is no longer assumed “inherently positive. ” she writes. Dalmatia stops looking like a paradise ruined by rude waiters and poor restaurant offerings. It becomes. instead. a hell administered by local politicians and investors who reduce people to eking out a livelihood in lowly hospitality roles as waiters. sailors. and cooks.

She brings her focus back to people: “just because someone was born in the south doesn’t mean they were made for the service industry.” She says islanders are among the most misanthropic in Croatia. and she argues the mainland easily forgets the cuttlefish ink in the Dalmatian soul because the image of the south shoved by Zagreb’s tabloid media doesn’t fit.

In the press, Dalmatians are never portrayed as oppressed. They’re depicted as buffoons and greedy primitives, “cannon fodder for HDZ.” She says Dalmatia begins to live this lie—and the ugly image reflects back onto Zagreb, which she describes as also becoming repulsive.

Dismantling Croatia, stone by stone

She says news stories keep painting the south as a madhouse. One Dalmatia headline she cites reads: ‘Man arrested after trying to poison child with rodent poison near Trogir.’

To frame how things have changed. she quotes art historian and conservator Cvito Fisković. who wrote about Trogir more than 60 years ago: ‘Malaria and poverty have disappeared. class differences between the nobility and the common folk have faded away. the bells are growing quieter. the old dialect is dying out. but in summer. the shallows are filled with the noisy games of youth. and in winter. under the beams of old ground floors. the smell of grilled fish mingles with the ever-warmer conversations of the young. their ventures ever bolder. their loves ever more sensual’.

“Much has changed,” she writes. Malaria may be gone, but poverty is making a comeback. Class differences are returning. She says Dalmatians no longer have time to enjoy the shallows in summer because they’re enslaved by the tourism machine to fill Croatia’s budget. She says winter in Trogir doesn’t exist because. like the rest of Dalmatia. Trogir ceases to exist in winter—unless. she adds. someone is trying to kill a child with rat poison.

The plundering of the Adriatic coast, she writes, has been going on for decades, and didn’t begin with HDZ, even if she says the party is now the primary executor of suspicious construction projects.

She recalls Fisković’s 1955 text For the Urban Integrity of Korčula. where he advocates for the restoration of old houses in the town of Korčula. In that text, Fisković warns that ‘one should not stumble over the small profits that individuals “enjoy” in this neglect’. She says back then. there were institutions that could protect the public interest. including the Split Urban Planning Office and the Dalmatian Conservation Institute.

She contrasts that with the present: she says that after fast-forwarding 70 years. the outcome is “white PVC windows installed on Klis Fortress.” She adds that those windows would have remained part of the heritage site from the fifth century had individuals not protested and pressured the HDZ mayor. Jakov Vetma. to have them removed.

If the contractors had even the slightest concern for Klis, she writes, plastic frames would never have been used. Instead, “these small tourist-driven profits” are dismantling Croatia, stone by stone. She says urban planning that once kept those interests in check no longer exists. and that now. HDZ and the Ministry of Tourism handle “restoration.”.

Tourism’s environment

Her own summers are part of the evidence. She and her husband have been spending their summers in Pag for the past few years. staying with Uncle Toni and Aunt Ruža. They rent a small room with a bathroom—without a kitchen—at a very low price. She says they vacation off-season to save money and avoid the heat, and “most importantly,” for the birds. Pag has ornithological reserves—Veliko. Malo. and Kolansko Blato—where you can observe species that don’t exist on the mainland.

But the last time she went to one of their usual birdwatching spots near Kolan. she says they met with a construction site: someone started building an exclusive weekend resort right on the shore. She continues toward Lun and says the experience is followed by another: as you continue toward Lun with its stunning ancient olive trees. you pass through Novalja. which she says is now completely deformed by new construction.

She describes what she can’t unsee: scanning for glossy ibises and whimbrels through binoculars, only to find concrete and sunburned tourist backsides.

She quotes a headline she says she read on morski.hr: ‘City of Novalja plants olive trees for 45 euros, pays 1,186 euros per piece? HDZ mayor explains…’. She responds to it bluntly: she says a few olive trees can’t hide HDZ’s “good results,” not in Novalja or anywhere else.

The issue, she says, isn’t limited to Dalmatia. She points to warnings from more than 40 years ago, naming writer Srebrenka Iveković-Marinović and art historian Berislav Valušek. In their newspaper article ‘The Tourist Queen and the Cultural Dwarfs’ (Danas. 18 May 1982). they outlined problems that plague the Croatian coast to this day.

She says the authors argued that architecture and greenery defined Opatija and set it apart from other destinations. and that those elements had become ‘the target of shooters with short-range thinking.’ She says they warned that environmental destruction could only be profitable in the short term. and that in the long run. rampant demolition and redevelopment would lead to the disappearance of Opatija’s originality—which she says is exactly what happened.

She says they harshly criticized Hotel Admiral. saying it had three TV lounges instead of paintings. and described the hotel as “a good example of the level of awareness of those in power.” In their view. the Admiral did not fit into its surroundings and symbolized a wave of inappropriate new constructions and expansions that were ‘slowly but surely destroying the historic unity of Opatija’s villas. palaces and hotels’.

She adds that in Yugoslavia, people who fought against coastal devastation and illegal construction were mostly art historians and conservators. On the other side. she describes the “cultural dwarfs” as those who cater to investors and remove cultural landmarks to make coastal towns look sterile and impersonal.

She says tourism deepens class divisions and promotes segregation of citizens who can’t afford vacations or home renovations. As the environment becomes ugly and exclusive. she writes. options for local residents shrink: they can stay poor or join the machine. She says that choice between two evils explains HDZ’s popularity in Dalmatia.

Betraying the Adriatic

She argues the south wasn’t only devastated materially but also culturally. Even if it holds music festivals and events, she says local residents can’t attend because they’re organized exclusively for foreigners.

She says Dubrovnik has become an exclusive destination for Americans and wealthy tourists. If access to public beaches isn’t blocked by illegal concrete barriers and concessions. she says. Croatian citizens are priced out of the coast. She claims it becomes incredibly difficult to buy fresh seafood in Zagreb in summer. and says she first thought fish stayed in Dalmatia. until she spoke with Dalmatians and learned even they don’t have easy access.

Cultural activity, she says, has been reduced to amateur souvenir-making. She contrasts it with what she says no longer exists: the summer school organized by Praxis on Korčula. and public assemblies on Hvar and Dubrovnik seminars on socialism and class issues. where Miko Tripalo and other Croatian philosophers and communists once spoke. Instead of critically reading seventeenth-century Croatian writer Junije Palmotić’s polemical poem Gomnaida in the summer. she says people are dealing with “literal shit spilling onto our beaches.”.

In her view. “cultural dwarfs” didn’t just build new developments—they demolished a culture that people had lived continuously for centuries. The discourse on the Croatian coastline. the Adriatic. and the Mediterranean is reduced to newspaper articles about child poisonings and entrepreneur-turned-politician Željko Kerum.

She writes that in winter, the coast becomes a graveyard of empty properties; new tourist-driven construction displaces the local population. She says the influx of luxury cars turns the south’s presence in Zagreb into jobs: cashiers. hairdressers. and those working in culture. She says many from the south flee to Zagreb to survive because tourism consumes everything in its path. including normal life.

She proposes a long-term solution based on high property taxes and, more importantly, decentralization of Croatia. She says high property taxes won’t be introduced until foreigners become locals—once they’ve bought everything that can be bought and renovated. Once their voters have sold family homes to tourists, then she says HDZ will impose taxes.

She calls decentralization a necessity not only for the survival of Dalmatia, the Kvarner Gulf, and Istria. She says the advantages would go both ways, because she argues Zagreb is a terrible place to live in summer, while Dalmatia is “dead” in winter.

She insists the capital must stop claiming ownership over the coast and treating Velebit as if it were just a larger version of Medvednica. That separation. she writes. would encourage Zagreb to develop better seasonal activities and open public pools that undergo maintenance every summer and remain closed to the public during the worst heat waves.

She says Croatia looks different when viewed from the south, and she wants that different perspective nurtured and respected.

She cites a line from the Croatian poet and traveller Antun Gustav Matoš from a 1969 guide to excursion destinations from Zagreb: ‘Regions are people. and people are regions’. She says the guide does not include the Adriatic coast and lists only places geographically and culturally close to Zagreb. She says, instead of Kvarner and Istria, it lists Slovenia and Slavonia.

She says the most important reason to fight the tourist-driven obsession with the Adriatic is climate change. She writes that global warming is where tourism and illegal development meet, but mainstream media rarely write about it.

She cites last year’s massive mussel die-off in Mali Ston Bay and says the “horrifying news” didn’t even make waves. She offers reasons she thinks it didn’t travel: sea temperatures are considered relevant mainly when discussing tourist comfort. and tourists don’t like mussels. preferring meat dishes.

She says southern Europe is getting hotter, fires are becoming more frequent and last longer, and people warn about the lack of drinking water during peak season in places whose infrastructure cannot support the vast number of overnight stays that fuel the state budget.

She calls the Adriatic an “invaluable treasure” that isn’t limitless. She says it consists of natural resources and people—both being consumed through mass tourism.

Yet she rejects abandonment of the sea. She says their relationship with the Adriatic doesn’t have to be purely touristic to enjoy it.

She quotes Gustav Krklec writing that he lies on “the warm sandy shoal of the Northern Adriatic. ” watching clouds over Vrbnik. She says he lies and daydreams on Krk “on a shimmering. sparkling July sand carpet. ” longing for solitude disrupted by tourist clamour that “bypasses all social conventions and established customs.”.

She says Krklec also quotes Matoš’s wanderer line: ‘Travelling, that is the poetry of modern civilization’. She says Matoš doesn’t look kindly on foreign tourists beginning to discover Yugoslavia. and that an incidental encounter with a Westerner who places Yugoslavia behind the Iron Curtain makes it clear Krklec does not see himself as a tourist.

So, she argues, lounging on the beach is far from apolitical. She asks what has changed so radically that perception of the south has been betrayed this badly: mass tourism and illegal development have taken a dump on all of them. She concludes with her phrasing: “We got the scumbags, the bastards and their corporations.”.

Breaking free

She returns to the start, to irritation on the beach at pretentious behaviour that ruins her view. She says tourist behaviour is theatrical because Krklec observed that it ‘bypasses all social conventions and established customs.’

In that melodramatic swaying of a child and selfish. performative love of a mother. she says she recognized a pattern she encounters in Croatia—not only in family dynamics but in everyday politics. She describes Croatian politics as stripped of real relationships and reduced to imaginary patriotism that rocks the public as if to soothe and protect it from a hostile world.

She says the real internal enemy, in the old Yugoslav communists’ words, is that grip—“that swaying motion which lulls us into a false sense of security.” She writes that it is clear from her text which party’s grip is choking Croatia and in whose vice her heads are slowly being crushed.

To break free, she says, Dalmatia must be liberated first, and then Dalmatia will liberate Zagreb. After that, she writes, the rest will be easy.

This article was first published by Kultur Punkt. Its translation from Croatian into English was commissioned as part of Come Together, a project leveraging existing wisdom from community media organization in six different countries to foster innovative approaches.

Croatia culture Adriatic tourism mass tourism illegal development Jadrolinija Lastovo David Sopta Mali Lošinj crash HDZ Dalmatia Pag Klis Fortress Opatija Josipa Rimac Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović Ante Sanader Dubravka Šuica climate change Mali Ston Bay mussel die-off cultural heritage heritage destruction