The President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, declared this Monday that he is "concerned" about the mass mobilizations scheduled for April 20 in the islands against tourist overcrowding, although he has rejected the term tourism-phobia.
"We are concerned because tourism is our main source of wealth and I believe that whoever comes to enjoy, spend a few days and leave their money in the Canary Islands, should not be rebuked," Clavijo said in statements to the media on the occasion of the visit to the construction project with volcanic ash of the IES Polytechnic of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
The president stressed that "we must be responsible", recalling that the current Government of the Canary Islands is "taking important steps in terms of housing, not only with the vacation rental law, but also with the decree that has recently been approved in the Parliament of the Canary Islands on housing".
For Clavijo, "we can talk, analyze and improve things, but not attack the main source of employment and wealth" because that "would be a responsibility".
He has asked for "common sense and tranquility" and has declared that he refuses "to talk about tourism-phobia".
The Canarian president has expressed that "we must analyze the demographic challenge, because we have eight different realities" in each of the islands, which requires talking with the island presidents and thus "also analyze the planning of the territory", since "the number of tourist beds, the number of homes and the infrastructures are dimensioned by the general plans".
For him, this issue requires "an in-depth debate" and that "in no case" should involve "attacking an economic activity that is what feeds the vast majority of this land".
In this line, he recalled that the Canary Islands has 16 million tourists and a turnover of 22,000 million euros and that "all that wealth has to be redistributed".
Clavijo has insisted that "there are two ways to redistribute wealth, on the one hand, taxes and on the other hand, employment" so that workers have "more decent wages with more stable work", while asking to "rethink how we have to order the planning and how we have to focus and project the Canary Islands for the coming years from the eight different realities" and "with common sense".
He also pointed out that the declaration of a stressed area will have to be studied since in Barcelona "it has had the opposite effect to the one it was looking for".
"When we want to solve things with headlines or with spur-of-the-moment ideas, what we achieve, and we have recently very clear examples in the current Government of Spain, is the opposite effect," he pointed out, insisting that, among the measures on the table, is the regulation of vacation homes, for rent, and protected housing.