"Lanzarote is experiencing a critical situation. The water crisis, the housing emergency and the growing precariousness of thousands of families contrast with the idyllic image of a tourist destination that generates millions of euros a year." "Faced with this structural inequality," the island secretary of the PSOE of Lanzarote and deputy in Congress, María Dolores Corujo, has once again raised the urgent need to implement an ecotax.
“It cannot be that those who built this paradise with their work continue to live in precariousness. This island has been built as a leading tourist destination with the sweat and sacrifice of thousands of people who today cannot access housing or are experiencing a collapse of basic services. Enough of exploiting Lanzarote without giving anything back to its people,” Corujo denounced.
The socialist leader insists that it is not about punishing tourism, but about correcting a model that expels the local population, saturates resources and enriches a few without redistributing wealth.
“The ecotax is not a whim. It is a tool for those who visit us to contribute to sustaining the services they use, the territory they travel and the quality of life of those who inhabit it. What is happening with water or with access to housing is no coincidence: it is the result of a model that squeezes the island while ignoring its limits and its people,” she added.
From the PSOE of Lanzarote they defend that the income obtained by this tax be allocated entirely to sustainable infrastructures, public housing (as is already done in the Balearic Islands), environmental protection and support for the sectors that sustain the day-to-day of the tourist destination.
Corujo also recalled that it was during her time as president of the Cabildo when Lanzarote was declared a touristically saturated island for the first time, warning of the need to implement limits and adopt courageous measures: “We warned and we will say it again: if we do not take structural decisions now, we are heading straight for collapse. And that collapse will be paid for, as always, by those who have the least.”
