The demonstrations against mass tourism held last Saturday, April 20, on all the Canary Islands, under the slogan Canary Islands Have a Limit, concentrated more than 200,000 people according to the organizers and more than 57,000 according to the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands. Outside the Canary Islands, there were also mobilizations of Canary Island residents in Granada, Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Berlin, London and Amsterdam.
The protests to demand the end of the mass tourism model, approve a tourism moratorium, the implementation of an ecotax, the limitation of rental prices and housing for sale or the protection of natural spaces have traveled during this weekend the national press and have reached the media with the largest audience in the countries that send tourists.
The British newspaper The Guardian kept the report Tens of thousands protest against Canary Islands’ ‘unsustainable’ tourism model among the most read information of the weekend, and in the first lines of its online cover on Saturday.
The article echoes that 13.9 million people visited the Canary Islands in 2023, although the resident population is 2.2 million. In addition, it highlighted that 35% of the Archipelago's GDP comes from the tourism industry, but despite the millionaire income, 33.8% of the population is at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
Added to this is the news agency of the British news agency Reuters that titled Thousands protest against over-tourism in Spain’s Canary Islands.
Along these lines, the British media Telegraph also published an opinion article in which it said We should stand in solidarity with anti-tourism protesters in the Canaries.
A travel editor highlighted that
