by Thousands of people will join protests across the Canary Islands on Saturday to demand an urgent rethink of the Spanish archipelago’s tourism industry and a freeze on tourist numbers, arguing that life is unaffordable and unsustainable from the point of view of the environment of your local people because of the current model, which is twenty or thirty years old. .
The protests – which will take place under the flag “Canarias tiene un limite” (The Canary Islands have a border) – they are supported by environmental groups including Greenpeace, WWF, Ecologists in Action, Friends of the Earth and SEO/Birdlife.
“We have reached the point where the balance between the use of resources and the public interest here has broken down – especially in the last year,” said Víctor Martín, spokesman for the Council. Canarias and Agota (The Canaries Have Had Enough) collective, which is helping to coordinate Saturday’s protests across the eight islands.
Eleven members of it Canarias se ré already on hunger strike for a week to protest the construction of two large luxury developments in the south of Tenerife, which they describe as “illegal” and completely unnecessary.
Last year, 13.9 million people visited the islands, which have a population of 2.2 million. Although tourism accounts for around 35% of the islands’ GDP – bringing in €16.9bn in 2022 alone – locals say the industry is stressing natural resources and pricing them out of the rental market.
Figures from Spain’s National Institute of Statistics show that 33.8% of people in the Canary Islands are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, the highest percentage of any region apart from Andalusia.
Martín said that the regional government’s continued focus on tourism made no sense at a time when water supply cuts were a result of the climate emergency. “Demand [for water] rising in urban areas where there are more tourists,” he said. “We had a very dry winter and a water emergency has already been declared on Tenerife.
“There will be restrictions if there is no more rain this month but it is 36C here at the moment. This is all unsustainable and means we won’t even be able to keep normal levels of tourism going. And yet the authorities and businesses here are trying to stick to this model.”
Martín added that the housing situation in many parts of the archipelago was also dire due to high prices, low wages, lack of public housing and the ongoing crisis in the cost of living. “I realized that we had reached the limit when I saw that people who were working as maids or hotel waiters were living in shackles,” he said.
“Wages are so low that they do not cover the basic costs of living – especially in the current global crisis, but keenly felt in the Canary Islands because we have to import almost everything.”
He argued that the protest movement was not anti-tourism, pointing out that many people in the Canary Islands knew and liked families from countries such as the UK and Germany.
“The tourists are not the problem,” he said. “It’s a model built around – and with the consent of – a business class that doesn’t want to listen to what needs to be done, and a political class that serves that business class rather than serving all citizens.”
He said that a complete rethinking of the tourism model of the Canaries could not wait. “What we are asking is very simple: considering that tourism is the main economic activity and the cause of all these problems, we want to immediately stop these two mega-projects,” a he said about the developments in Tenerife.
“We also want a tourism moratorium that will result in a study of the burden each island can take and determine whether we have already passed the critical point. In overburdened areas, we want to see a decline in economic activity for the benefit of natural resources. Otherwise, you already have a model that only benefits a small number of people.”
Martín said that a proper study of the problems of the Canary Islands could have global consequences. “This rethinking of the tourism model could put the Canary Islands on the map as an example of sustainable tourism development,” he said. “We could be known for something positive rather than something negative.”
Fernando Clavijo, the regional president of the Canary Islands, has said that his government is already taking action. “All the actions taken by this government were based on a review of this model,” he told reporters this week. “The tourism model of the Canaries has been a success, but obviously, as with anything, there are things that could be done.”
Overtourism is a major issue in many Spanish cities and regions, which has sparked protests and backlashes in Barcelona, and has led the authorities in Seville to consider charging visitors to explore the Plaza de España the famous city of Andalusia.
