Tens of thousands protest against Canary Islands’
‘unsustainable’ tourism model
Organisers say 50,000 turn out to call for limit on
tourist numbers, saying model makes life unaffordable and puts strain on
resources
Sam Jones
in Madrid
Sat 20 Apr
2024 16.32 CEST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/20/thousands-protest-canary-islands-unsustainable-tourism
Tens of
thousands of people are protesting across the Canary Islands to call for an
urgent rethink of the Spanish archipelago’s tourism strategy and a freeze on
visitor numbers, arguing that the decades-old model has made life unaffordable
and environmentally unsustainable for residents.
The
protests, which are taking place under the banner “Canarias tiene un límite” –
The Canaries have a limit – are backed by environmental groups including
Greenpeace, WWF, Ecologists in Action, Friends of the Earth and SEO/Birdlife.
“We’ve
reached the point where the balance between the use of resources and the
welfare of the population here has broken down, especially over the past year,”
said Víctor Martín, a spokesperson for the collective Canarias se Agota – The
Canaries Have Had Enough – which helped to coordinate protests on Saturday
across the eight islands.
Eleven
members of Canarias se Agota have already been on hunger strike for a week to
protest against the construction of two large luxury developments in southern
Tenerife, which they describe as illegal and totally unnecessary.
Police said
20,000 people had turned out for the demonstrations, but organisers put the
figure closer to 50,000, Spain’s TVE public television said.
“We are not
against tourism,” Rosario Correo, one of the protesters, told TVE. “We’re
asking that they change this model that allows for unlimited growth of
tourism.”
Protesters also gathered in Madrid and Barcelona to
show their support for the rallies in the Canary Islands, public television
said.
Last year,
13.9 million people visited the islands, which have a population of 2.2
million. Tourism accounts for about 35% of the archipelago’s GDP – bringing in
€16.9bn in 2022 alone – but local people say the industry is stressing natural
resources and pricing them out of the rental market.
Figures
from Spain’s National Statistics Institute show that 33.8% of people in the
Canaries are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, the highest proportion for
any region except Andalucía.
Martín said
the regional government’s continuing focus on tourism at a time when the
climate emergency was leading to cuts to water supplies made no sense. “Demand
is rising in urban areas where there are more tourists,” he said. “We’ve had a
very dry winter and a water emergency’s already been declared on Tenerife.
“There are
going to be restrictions if there’s not more rain this month but it’s 36C here
right now. This is all unsustainable and it means that we won’t even be able to
keep normal levels of tourism going. And yet the authorities and the businesses
here are trying to stick with this model.”
The housing
situation in many parts of the archipelago was also dire because of high
prices, low wages, a lack of public housing and the continuing cost of living
crisis, Martín said. “I realised we’d reached the limit when I saw people who
were working as hotel maids or waiters were living in shacks.
“Wages are
so low that they don’t cover the basic costs of living, especially in the
current crisis, which is global, but has been felt keenly in the Canaries
because we have to import practically everything.”
He insisted
the protest movement was not anti-tourist, pointing out that many people in the
Canaries had known and liked generations of families from countries such as the
UK and Germany.
“The
problem isn’t the tourists,” he said. “It’s a model that was built around, and
with the connivance of, a business class that doesn’t want to listen to what
needs to be done, and with a political class that serves that business class
instead of serving all the citizens.”
He said a
complete rethink of the Canaries’ tourism model could not wait. “What we’re
asking is very simple. Given that tourism is the main economic activity and the
cause of all these problems, we want an immediate halt to these two
mega-projects,” he said of the Tenerife developments.
“We also
want a tourist moratorium that will lead to a study of the load each island can
take and which will determine whether we’ve already passed the critical point.
In areas where there’s an overload, we want to see a stage of degrowth of
economic activity to benefit natural resources. Otherwise, you have an existing
model that only benefits a very few people.”
Martín said
a proper study of the problems the Canaries suffer from could have global
repercussions. “This rethinking of the tourism model could put the Canaries on
the map as an example of sustainable tourism development,” he said. “We could
be known for something positive instead of something negative.”
Fernando
Clavijo, the regional president of the Canary Islands, has said his
administration is already taking action. “All the actions this government has
taken have been based on a revision of this model,” he told reporters this
week. “The Canaries tourist model has been a successful one, but obviously, as
with anything, there are things that could be perfected.”
Over-tourism
has become a major issue in many Spanish cities and regions, triggering
protests and backlashes in Barcelona, and leading the authorities in Seville to
consider charging visitors to explore the Andalucían city’s famous Plaza de
España.
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