Lanzarote is the Canary Island with the highest number of tourist places per square meter of surface area and the second island in the archipelago with the most tourist places per inhabitant. This is stated in the draft of the Island Plan of Lanzarote, prepared by the public company Gesplan, which La Voz has had access to.
The island of volcanoes is only behind Fuerteventura in the number of tourist places per resident, which implies "a high potential floating population for tourism reasons", which consumes resources such as water and electricity and generates waste. In addition, five of the seven municipalities of Lanzarote exceed the Canary Islands average of tourist places per inhabitant. With the exception of Arrecife and San Bartolomé, the rest of the localities are above the Canary Islands average, with the most pressing situation in the most touristy municipalities (Tías, Yaiza and Teguise), which also exceed the Lanzarote average.
This document, crucial to determining the future of Lanzarote, states that the "high density of tourist places in a given area" implies that "there is a large amount of accommodation and tourist services [...] in a relatively small area" and this has "positive consequences", but also negative ones such as the "overload of natural resources, environmental pollution, congestion, gentrification and degradation of services", among others.
The most touristy municipalities are also those that concentrate the highest number of non-primary homes. The municipality of Tías, in fact, is the only one in Lanzarote that has more second homes than primary homes. In addition, with data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), Tías was the Spanish municipality with more than 10,000 inhabitants with the highest percentage of empty homes.
