Clavijo: "Aena is milking the Canary Islands airports to cover its losses"

The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando **Clavijo**, has **accused Aena of "milking the airports"** of the islands with an **unagreed-upon tax increase** to "cover its losses and provide profits to its private partners".

Before attending the official inauguration of the Madrid International Tourism Fair, Clavijo insisted that **the Canary Islands government rejects this "unilateral" way of acting** by the airport operator, considering it is not the way for tourism to remain a source of wealth and stable employment and for its profits to remain mostly in the islands.

In statements to journalists, Clavijo insisted that, for this reason, the Canary Islands request, under the protection of their Statute of Autonomy, **"to be involved in the management"** of the airports.

Regarding the tourism expectations for this community for 2026, the president said that they not only involve continued growth, as in 2025 when it received 18.4 million visitors and registered a turnover of 23 billion euros, but also "continuing to improve the distribution of wealth that this activity generates in the Canary Islands".

In this way, he specified that the objective for the current year is to "continue delving into quality, leisure, better distribution of wealth, and environmental protection, with novel measures such as the tax to access the Teide National Park, which will allow us to control capacity and **protect our main asset, which is our ecosystem**".

In his opinion, if tourism does not translate into **a better quality of life** for the Canaries, "there will be no sustainability" and the islands will lose their "main potential", their natural environment.

Therefore, the reflection that the Canary Islands are making for 2026 is "that this should not only be measured by counting tourists or turnover, but that legal certainty must be provided, and we must seek more select products that generate more wealth", until **achieving that tourists spend 30% more on culture or gastronomy**, since 70% is allocated to paying for transport and accommodation.

"A mature and successful destination like ours, which contributes significantly to the arrival of tourists to Spain, must move along this path together, with unions and employers, because we all pursue the same objective. This is **the Canarian way of doing things: reflecting, working scientifically, looking at the data, and charting a course** that we can all follow together so that tourism, which generates 281,000 jobs, also improves the quality of life for the Canaries," he stated.

The Canarian president considered that, **by raising its fees, "Aena is going in the opposite direction** to the one the entire Canarian society wants to go" and warned that this price increase comes in "an uncertain year, in which it is unknown what will happen with British and German tourism, the main clients" of the islands.