Several demonstrations took place this Sunday in the main tourist areas of the Canary Islands to protest the “excesses” of tourism, overcrowding, the crisis in the housing market and what they consider inaction by the Government of the Canary Islands. The protests have brought together some 6,500 people in Playa de Las Américas, in the south of Tenerife, and another 1,500 in Maspalomas, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in addition to hundreds of protesters in Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and La Palma, according to data from the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands. According to the organizers, between 26,000 and 31,200 people attended the demonstration called in Tenerife.
Environmental organizations have taken to the streets again six months after the massive concentrations ofl April 20when they managed to attract almost 60,000 people. This time, the organizers have chosen to take the action to the tourist centers, where thousands of people have marched to the rhythm of slogans such as “this beach is ours”, “tourism is killing my land”, “The Canary Islands are not for sale”, “Marichal, start cleaning” (in reference to Jorge Marichal, president of the Hotel and Non-Hotel Association of Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro, Ashotel), “Canarian Coalition is a real estate company”, “Corrupts out of Canary Islands!”, “Clavijo, resign; “The people don’t admit you!” and, above all, “The Canary Islands are not for sale; “You love and defend yourself!”
The spokesperson for Ben Magec and the platform that organizes the demonstrations, Eugenio Reyes, lamented on Maspalomas beach that six months have passed “and that everything remains the same”, with a Government, he said, that intends to continue increasing tourist beds and hotel establishments. “It is regrettable that after six months there has been no official contact nor has an observatory or any space been created for civil society to listen to citizens, who have concrete proposals,” he added.
“This tourism model does not work,” said the spokespersons for the movement, Ana Rodríguez and Carla Pérez, during the reading of the manifesto in Tenerife. “With more than 18 million visitors a year, our quality of life is deteriorating by leaps and bounds,” they stated. “The irony is cruel: while the big hotel chains line their pockets, our people fight to survive.” The organizers have once again put their demands on the table: the immediate and definitive stoppage of “illegal projects” such as the Hotel de la Tejita, Cradle of the Soul or he Motor Circuit, all three in the south of Tenerife. In addition, they demand a “real hotel and vacation moratorium”, a “housing law against speculation”, a “real ecotax”, which is “destined exclusively to the conservation of Protected Natural Spaces”; and that “more roads, parking, or trains” be renounced, among other claims.
On Wednesday, the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, had admitted that “there are things that are not being done well.” He asked himself, however, “what we are asked to change” in a land that “cannot live off of anything other than” this activity. In his opinion, tourism can be asked to contribute to improving the persistent poverty rates that occur in the Canary Islands, something that, as he has said, some are already doing.
In August, latest data available in the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics (Istac)1.4 million visitors arrived in the Canary Islands, 8.94% more than a year before. Residents abroad (1.21 million in total) grew by 10.38% year-on-year; residents in Spain increased by 2.2%. The regional Executive expects that this year the visitor record set in 2023 will be broken at 16.2 million total visitors. The budgets leave the islands with close to 18 million people.
Despite these data, according to the latest report from the European Network to Fight Poverty and Social Exclusiona third of the Canary Islands are at risk of poverty. Furthermore, two out of three have problems making ends meet and one out of five is late paying their rent or mortgage, figures at the top in Europe. The islands closed the second quarter of the year with an unemployment rate of 13.86%, according to the Active Population Survey (EPA) of the National Institute of Statistics. This figure is the lowest since December 2007, when it stood at 10.89%. The rate is two and a half points above the Spanish average (11.27%) and is the fourth highest in the country, after Andalusia (16.27%), Extremadura (15.40%) and Castilla-La Spot (13.92%).
