Thousands protest against current tourism and housing model in Canary Islands
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Locals living in the popular holiday spot of the Canaries are fed up with a tourist economy that leads to growing inequality and jeopardises their right to housing
Lo de hoy ha sido simplemente espectacular. El pueblo ha hablado. Queremos un modelo sostenible con su tierra y su gente, queremos una vida digna y feliz. Y la queremos ahora. #Canariastieneunlímitepic.twitter.com/HC01gaxP12
Multitudes of people in Spain’s Canary Islands took to the streets this Saturday, April 20, to demand that the archipelago change its existing tourism model, which is leading to overcrowding and social problems for people living on the islands and for the environment.
According to the organising groups, the march brought together more than 80,000 people in Tenerife and 50,000 people in Gran Canaria, who vociferously rejected the current tourism model under the slogan ‘Canarias tiene un límite’ (‘The Canaries have a limit’).
The most crowded march was undoubtedly the one in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, with a massive throng of people several kilometres long between the Cabildo and the Plaza Weyler that exceeded all expectations.
According to data from the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands, there were some 30,000 people in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in addition to the demonstration in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, which had around 14,000 people. In Arrecife (Lanzarote), the demonstration brought together about 9,000 people, according to the Delegation.
Protestors were expressing their discontent with the local government’s tourism model and the economic model that has sustained it for decades. While the Canary Islands achieve record tourist numbers year after year, bringing in lots of money, the poverty risk rate for the community is above 30%.
One of the most controversial issues is holiday rentals, for which a new law is currently being drafted at a local level and which is currently being submitted to the housing sector and also to some local councils. The number of holiday homes in the Canary Islands continues to rise without limit and already accounts for 36% of the tourist accommodation registered in the Canary Islands, twice as many as the number of flats used for long-term rentals. At the same time, rental prices increased by 9% in the last quarter and continue to rise steeply.
In several municipalities, such as Pájara (Fuerteventura), Yaiza and Tías (Lanzarote), Mogán and San Bartolomé de Tirajana (Gran Canaria) and Adeje (Tenerife), there are already more spaces for tourists to stay than there are inhabitants registered on the Padrón local census.
Several groups came together under the banner of ‘Canarias tiene un límite’, including environmentalists, neighbourhood associations, climate experts and the university community, for the largest mass gatherings in the islands since the protests to reject oil prospecting off the coasts of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura in 2014 and the protests against the installation of high-voltage pylons in Tenerife in 2002. As well as calling for a declaration of ‘stressed areas’ in terms of housing and for stricter controls on tourism and housing, the demonstrators are demanding the protection of the natural environment against the current tourism model, too.
Specifically, they want the government to stop prioritising economic growth based on tourism that gives most of the money to large multinationals who take those earnings out of the islands. Instead, they want a limit on the number of spaces allocated for tourists to stay, including in hotels and short-term holiday lets, and they have called for the introduction of an ‘eco-tax’, an initiative that has been on the table for years but is still up in the air.
Also prominent among their demands is a call for the regulation of property purchases by foreigners, which has grown by 10% in the last five years.
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