"The diagnosis is clear: Lanzarote has completely exceeded its carrying capacity," the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, María Dolores Corujo, announced at a press conference held this Thursday at the Islote de Fermina in Arrecife. The island already approaches three million tourists annually and is one of the most visited in the Canary Islands. For this reason, Corujo has announced that the institution will initiate the procedure to declare Lanzarote as a "touristically saturated island."
As she explained, the Governing Council of the Cabildo of Lanzarote commissioned Gaia Consultores Insulares to conduct a new study on the island's carrying capacity. Among the conclusions obtained by the environmental consultancy, she highlighted that the analysis of the carrying capacity indicators "leaves no room for doubt and Lanzarote must be declared a touristically saturated zone." In this sense, she revealed that this declaration should also be reflected in the island's planning plans.
"Referring to Lanzarote as a touristically saturated zone is not imprudent, despite the editorials and opinions of some media outlets. Debating this does not reflect the PSOE's obsession against tourism. What is at risk is pretending to ignore a reality and pretending to continue acting as in the 60s," Dolores Corujo defended.
Although this work can be read in full, Corujo has anticipated some brushstrokes of the conclusions obtained in the analysis. This study has revealed data such as that, "in the last 12 years, the consumption of drinking water in Lanzarote has increased by 20% its growth or that the tourist density has gone from 70.1 places per square kilometer (2001) to 201 places at present."
Another of the figures offered by the president during her speech was that the population of Lanzarote "has grown by 51% in two decades" and that, in addition, the vehicle fleet has gone from 95,000 in 2005 to 137,000 in 2022. "This growth is absolutely unsustainable," she pointed out, and also pointed to the "voluntary blindness to continue defending the benefit of a few, putting our future at risk."
Regarding the elaboration of the carrying capacity study, Lanzarote was a pioneer at the beginning of the century in studying tourist saturation on the island. This is the second time that a public institution in the Canary Islands has done a complete study in this matter. According to Corujo, this new research could become "the best work that has ever been done on carrying capacity" in the Archipelago. "There can be no treatment without diagnosis and diagnoses are not rejected because someone does not like the result," she defended during the announcement.
On whether she will leave the Island Planning Plan advanced before the elections on May 28, Dolores Corujo has announced that she prefers this project to be developed more slowly and counting on "the island society and all political and business forces."
The problems of vacation homes
"Lanzarote faces its future conditioned: it has completely exceeded its carrying capacity, completely surpassing the point of saturation and our tourism model overflows towards an important condition of unplanned accommodation," she expressed during her appearance.
In this second point, she highlighted the problem of unregulated vacation homes located in residential areas. "Almost a third of Lanzarote's accommodation offer is made up of vacation homes. While tourist beds show a stable trend, with slight own oscillations, vacation homes are growing at a sustained rate of just over 3% per year," she reported. "One in three people who visit us spend their stay in an accommodation that develops its activity in a legal limbo, completely absent, not only from forecast in the accommodation but from control."
Vacation homes can be the "old country house that we have remodeled" to the apartment "without conditions that generates problems of coexistence with the rest of the neighbors," she clarified. In this sense, Corujo has reported that the problem with vacation homes is that "too often" they are located in residential areas, intended for living, which makes it difficult for families to "access decent housing."
"The skeletons of illegal works do put the island of Lanzarote at risk. Defending the economic activity of tourism requires rigor"
The Law of Land and Protected Natural Spaces of the Canary Islands indicates that in the areas for tourist development, the planning plans may identify the area of the island where tourist or residential growth may not be allowed because it is incompatible with environmental development. "When a whole series of parameters are exceeded, we are talking about tourist saturation."
For the moment, the approval of the new Island Planning Plan remains in the air, but Corujo has advanced that it will have "more adjusted criteria." In the same way, she has denounced that "those who wanted Lanzarote to continue growing left everything almost well tied, and left us in a complicated situation."
On the progress made in this area during the legislature, she stressed the filing of the Island Plan and the progress in adapting to the Canary Land Law. "We prefer criticism for our inaction than to continue processing an instrument that was not convenient at all in Lanzarote," the president alluded to the Island Planning Plan of the island.
