This week, Venetians have taken to the water to protest against the cruise ships that swamp their city. It’s just the latest fightback against the endless waves of visitors

Imagine a packed Emirates Stadium emptying its stands on a town the size of Margate every day and you begin to get a sense of how swamped sinking Venice has become. Now tensions that have simmered for decades are boiling over as the city’s vanishing population of 55,000 fight back against the tourist tide.

On Sunday, members of the Comitato NO Grandi Navi, a group campaigning against the giant cruise ships that daily disgorge visitors into the fragile lagoon, took to dinghies to get in the way. Or at least to make a noise while some of the estimated 30,000 peak-season daily cruise visitors peered down at them from the upper decks.

More than 60,000 people descend on Venice each day, with less than half staying the night. “At least the tourists in the hotels are easier to manage, and bring richness to the city,” says Marco Caberlotto, a member of Generation 90, a campaign group established this summer. “Most people just want to take a selfie in St Mark’s Square before they go back to their ships.”

Caberlotto, 25, represents a generation of Venetians being priced and crowded out of their city by tourists who come in search of history and bad pizza. They have had enough. The city’s population is now shrinking by about 1,000 people a year as property prices and rents soar. Landlords are increasingly renting space via Airbnb.

For those who remain – Caberlotto, a masters student, lives in a small apartment owned by his parents – daily life can be an assault course of choked streets and overloaded vaporetti. Last month, more than 500 members of Generation 90 staged a march. They held up shopping trolleys and push chairs and chanted in Venetian dialect: “Watch your legs, I’m coming through with a trolley.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A demonstration against cruise liners being allowed into the city. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The longer-term threats are graver still. In July, Unesco’s world heritage site committee voted to postpone a decision on whether to put Venice on its list of endangered sites. The decision followed a damning 2015 report into the effects of overcrowding, construction and pollution on Venice’s teetering foundations and ecology.

Campaigners are calling for visitor caps, a cruise ship cordon and measures to tackle the housing crisis. Generation 90 want at the very least a version of an Airbnb tax introduced in Florence this year (€2.50 per person per night). But the city government, which could not respond in time for publication, has been beset by accusations of inaction and the fallout of a 2014 corruption scandal related to the building of flood defences.

As for the cruise companies? Nobody at P&O, Cunard, Royal Caribbean or Thomson could explain how they plan to respond to the problem of overcrowding when contacted by the Guardian. Cruise Lines International Association, the industry body, says it is urging the Venetian authorities to find a solution, insisting that it already self-imposes a ban on the biggest ships. It also points out the economic benefits of cruising to the region.

“The problem is that these tourists think this is a kind of Disneyland,” Caberlotto says in a break from studying at a library on the Zaterre promenade, where many of the cruise ships dock. “They should remember that this is a living city.”