It has been more than a month since the citizen mobilizations against mass tourism in the Canary Islands on April 20 and none of its demands have been met in the short term.
But, in return, the institutions and political formations have immersed themselves in reports, studies, commissions and working groups, all with a view to a roadmap for change for 30 years, according to announcements.
"Things have to change," acknowledged Fernando Clavijo, the president of the Canary Islands, after historic demonstrations in terms of participation (at least 100,000 people) that forced the political forces of this and the previous term to take a breath to float between the contradictions that public speeches drag when they are contrasted with government action.
Underlying the protests was a general discomfort with the deterioration in basic rights and public services, in the environment or in the quality of life.
But there were also explicit demands: An ecotax for overnight stays, a profound change in the tourism model that begins with the conservation of natural spaces, a tourism and vacation rental moratorium or the regulation of the purchase of housing by foreigners.
There were also two demands for immediate application, very symbolic for activists when measuring the degree of political sincerity towards change, because they would involve the paralysis of two projects in Tenerife that they associate with the tourist development that they want to overcome: a hotel on La Tejita beach and a luxury urbanization in Adeje, Cuna del Alma.
What has not changed since the demonstrations are the growing and, for now, unstoppable economic figures.
Thus, the Canary Islands economy breaks records of visitors and income month after month, so that the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which usually carries out exhaustive studies on the economic situation, confirms that things are going "frankly well."
And despite this, a palpable social malaise remains: the price of rents also breaks records, there are fewer and fewer homes available for residents and more for tourists, prices that few can afford, workers who live in vehicles, salaries among the lowest in Spain that do not allow basic needs to be covered, strained public services, gentrification of urban centers, massification of natural spaces or traffic collapses.
In such a way that in this long month since the demonstrations, the tourist debate and its derivatives on the high cost and scarcity of housing continues to dominate political life.
No to the ecotax
The groups that support the government (CC, PP, ASG and AHI), with the additional support of Vox, have rejected up to three times in this period the proposals of the opposition of PSOE and Nueva Canarias to introduce an ecotax or tax for tourist overnight stays to non-residents, although they do not always show the same firmness in their rejection.
Thus, while the PP maintains its traditional position of rejecting the ecotax, Coalición Canaria has stated on several occasions its willingness to talk about the matter.
The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, has proposed as an alternative to increase the IGIC rate for overnight stays, for the moment without having managed to add adhesions.
In the Cabildo of Tenerife, the island that with a more powerful mobilization in favor of another tourism model, also rejected the ecotax with the votes of CC and PP, although for the moment it is the only institution, together with the City Council of Mogán (Gran Canaria), that has advanced in some palpable measure after the demonstrations.
The Tenerife Cabildo will implement a earmarked tax to charge for visiting the natural and protected spaces of the island, although its implementation, which could be in 2025, is in the study and analysis phase. For its part, the City Council of Mogán, governed by CC, intends to be the first municipality in the islands to have an ecotax that taxes hotel overnight stays.
In the case of low wages in the tourism sector, the president of the Canary Islands has proposed another idea to favor increases above what is foreseen in collective agreements, which would consist of subsidizing Social Security contributions to companies that are willing.
No moratorium on vacation rentals
Another of the issues demanded, the moratorium on the proliferation of vacation homes at the expense of the reduction of the supply of residential rentals, with the consequent price increase, is also a pending issue.
The government is moving forward with its purpose of regulating vacation rentals by law, but in timeframes that could be extended until the end of the year, while registrations in the registry to carry out this activity increase.
Faced with the demand for a moratorium on registrations while the new law is approved, Fernando Clavijo refers to the fact that it is a municipal competence.
The adoption of measures to favor the exit of empty homes to the residential rental market is also a pending issue, as is the demand of the demonstrators of April 20 to restrict the purchase of homes to foreigners, an issue that is limited to the electoral debate for the European Parliament, without there being certainty about whether it can be specified, given the current community legislation.
A moratorium on tourist places does not appear on the agenda at the moment either, and in the meantime the Government of the Canary Islands has authorized a new complex of a thousand beds in Fuerteventura.
The development model
The demonstrations on all the islands on April 20 were conceived from the initial call in Tenerife, where many mobilized against two specific tourist projects considered characteristic of the development model of mass tourism that degrades the coasts and natural spaces.
To examine the sincere will of change of the political class, the environmental groups proposed the immediate paralysis of the two projects: a hotel on La Tejita beach, possibly the best natural beach on the island, located in the municipality of Granadilla, and a luxury housing complex in the port of Adeje.
Both the municipality of Granadilla and Adeje are governed by the PSOE and it is in the different responses given by the same party where the contradiction that addressing a change in the tourism model can entail for the political class is reflected.
The PSOE, from the Government of the Canary Islands, took some steps to stop or at least delay these projects, but both have been resumed in this legislature.
In Adeje, the political fiefdom of the PSOE, one of the main tourist centers of the Canary Islands, the mayor, José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga, president of the Socialist Party in the Canary Islands, does not consider in any way buying the land or paralyzing the Cuna del Alma project, which he also considers very positive and exemplary.
On the other hand, his counterpart in Granadilla, Jennifer Miranda, is in favor of paralyzing the hotel on La Tejita beach based on a proposal for the Government of the Canary Islands to buy the land, as was proposed in the previous legislature. But the current Executive is not going to assume that cost, so the project continues.
In Granadilla there is another project that also reflects that contradiction in which the political class lives: the PSOE of the Cabildo of Tenerife, which on the one hand is moving to implement an ecotax for overnight stays, as the demonstrators demanded, wants at the same time to spend 56 million euros of public money to build a motor circuit in that municipality, against which the citizen groups of April 20 are fighting.
Study groups
In the absence of tangible results from the demonstrations of April 20, the main institutional response has led to the convocation of study groups whose first proposals are expected for the autumn, in time for those measures that require financing to be included in the autonomous budgets of 2025.
The main forum to which the responses have been referred is the Conference of Presidents, which brings together the president of the Canary Islands and the heads of the seven island councils.
There it has been resolved the creation of five working groups between Government, councils and municipalities to address the Canary Islands of the next thirty years, according to official rhetoric.
A strategy to address the demographic challenge, manage the territory, facilitate housing in the residential market, improve training and quality of employment in the tourism sector, protect and order natural spaces or fix the population in municipalities of less than 10,000 inhabitants.
