The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo (CC), believes that the 18 million tourists that the islands have received in 2024 - an unprecedented figure in their history - set a benchmark for rethinking the strategy as a destination, before the engine of their economy begins to be uncomfortable for the population.
"We cannot continue in a model of more tourists. Maybe we have to start saying: the same or less, but with greater purchasing power, with greater spending at the destination and with a more responsible use of our natural resources," warns the Canarian president, in an interview with EFE.
Fernando Clavijo makes these considerations in a week in which the National Institute of Statistics (INE) has confirmed that the tourism sector of the islands enjoyed a prodigious year in 2024, with more than one million visitors above its previous record, which dated from the period prior to the pandemic (14.2 million international travelers in 2017).
Last year, the Canary Islands received 15.2 million foreign tourists (9% more), almost the same as the Balearic Islands, who spent 22,886 million euros on the islands (+12% more), a fifth of all tourist revenue in Spain.
If nationals are added to the foreigners, the balance for the year is 18 million tourists; that is, one and a half million per month for a community of 2.24 million inhabitants.
In his conversation with EFE, Clavijo is very aware that the islands have also experienced demonstrations against tourist overcrowding this year, protests that he does not take as a symptom of tourismophobia - a phenomenon that he does not appreciate in the Canary Islands - but as a warning of the discontent generated by certain edges of the sector in society, including those related to housing.
Therefore, he advocates for "rethinking" the model before a tourist and resident "collide." "If there is a collision between those two parts, between the Canarian who lives and works in the Canary Islands being able to live and enjoy the Canary Islands and that being compatible with those who visit us, then people will really start to feel bad and uncomfortable. That is the debate we have," he explains.
And his Government, he adds, aspires to a model "of more quality and less quantity" that not only does not imply continuing to grow in visitors year after year, but also "better redistributes" the wealth generated by tourism to society through salaries.
"It is evident that the tourism sector has meant for the Canary Islands to go from a ruralized and poor society to what we are today. The path we have traveled has been successful," he points out, "but now our growth has to be qualitative, not quantitative."
Because reaching figures such as 18 million tourists, he argues, implies approaching "the sustainability capacity" of the Canary Islands territory and entails the risk that an activity that generates wealth "collides" with having "quality of life."
