Without even having held the simultaneous demonstrations in six of the eight Canary Islands for April 20 in demand of a change in the mass tourism model, only its call has forced the political class to change its agenda, which has placed one of the demands at the center of the debate, the tourist tax.
This popular mobilization, which is expected to be crowded and has been brewing among environmental groups and citizens outside of all political parties, does not only demand an eco-tax, but a profound change in the tourism model that begins with the conservation of natural spaces, a tourism and vacation rental moratorium, and the regulation of home purchases by foreigners. But it has been the tourist tax that the parties have placed at the center of the debate.
The tourist tax or eco-tax is a charge per night that would be applied to people staying in tourist establishments and whose collection would be used for environmental conservation, tourism infrastructure or sustainability, to compensate for the social and ecological impact of the more than 16 million annual visitors to the Canary Islands.
The eco-tax has been talked about in the Canary Islands for decades, a debate driven first by Nueva Canarias and later also by Sí Podemos, but the traditional opposition of CC, PP and PSOE and hotel businessmen has prevented it from going beyond isolated proposals, without any studies or evaluations having been carried out on the effects of its eventual implementation.
The pragmatic shift in the political debate has been parallel to a radical change in the language with which the Government of the Canary Islands and businessmen have referred to the convening groups.
In a matter of days, the demonstrations have gone from being a dangerous army of tourism-phobes that could scare away customers from European markets to "an opportunity" to "reflect" on the Canary Islands tourism model, as admitted by the regional president, Fernando Clavijo.
In the eco-tax debate, what the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), the Canarian Coalition (CC), the Popular Party (PP), Nueva Canarias (NC), the Gomera Socialist Group (ASG) and Sí Podemos Canarias (SPC) have in common is that they have all governed and none have implemented it.
The last two governments of the Canary Islands have the same thing in common, the progressive pact of the last legislature (PSOE, NC, SPC and ASG) and the center-right of the current one (CC, PP and ASG, with the addition of AHI, the herreño ally of the Canarian Coalition): none has been in favor of implementing the eco-tax.
From there, with the wave of popular mobilizations, apparently some move more than others.
The Canarian Coalition has always opposed the eco-tax, but the novelty is that now its leader and president of the regional government, Fernando Clavijo, has said that he is "not closed" to talking about the issue. It doesn't seem like much, but his main partner, the vice president of the executive, Manuel Domínguez, leader of the PP of the Canary Islands, has made it clear that "there will be no tourist tax" and that his party maintains the same position in the opposition and in the government.
As for the PSOE of Ángel Víctor Torres, former president of the Canary Islands, the furthest he had gone was to commit to "study" together with the tourism sector the possibility of implementing an eco-tax, a study that he never did.
Now, from the opposition and after the social mobilization, the socialists have presented an initiative in Parliament in which they ask the Government of the Canary Islands not to study the tourist tax, but to approve a decree and apply it.
Nueva Canarias and Sí Podemos have not changed, they have always been in favor of the tourist tax, although they have placed more or less emphasis on promoting it depending on the agreements reached to govern.
As for ASG, led by the president of the Cabildo de La Gomera, Casimiro Curbelo, has always been against the tourist tax, and in fact it was one of his red lines. Now, Casimiro Curbelo says that, "given the panorama", he is "willing to debate".
The recurring reason for rejecting the eco-tax in the last decade has almost always been the same: "it is not the time"; when the economy is doing badly because there is no need to put additional burdens on the sector and when the economy is doing well because there is no need to reduce its competitiveness.
The government of the progressive pact from 2019 to 2023, headed by Ángel Víctor Torres, did not advance on the tourist tax because "it is not the time", despite the fact that the two main defenders of the measure participated in the executive.
It is the same reason that Paulino Rivero (CC) had given a few years earlier, in 2014, when he said: it is an interesting possibility but "it is not the time". His successor as president, Fernando Clavijo, also rejected the tourist tax in 2015 while proposing a debate on the future of the tourism model, a debate that he has announced again in 2024.
Nueva Canarias always distinguished itself by insistently demanding this tourist tax in the face of the rejection of CC, PP, PSOE, ASG and the hotel employers' association.
With the arrival of Podemos to the Parliament of the Canary Islands in 2015, Nueva Canarias was accompanied in this demand, but the Canarian Government (CC and PSOE first and then CC alone) continued to reject it despite the good moment of Canarian tourism (which had gone from being 25% of the regional GDP to 35% in six years).
Thus, when the debate was reproduced in 2017, the response of the Government of the Canary Islands was that a tourist tax could not be introduced even if the economy was doing well because "it is not known how long the situation is going to last".
A year later, in 2018, the PSOE, after the rupture of the pact with CC in the regional government and moving to the opposition, changed its mind, which gave Nueva Canarias the opportunity to raise the debate again, but CC then relied on the PP and ASG to reject the tax.
Precisely PSOE, NC and Podemos defended the tourist tax in the electoral campaign that led them to the government of the Canary Islands in 2019, but they never implemented it. They shared government with ASG, a party radically opposed to the eco-tax and to which the Ministry of Tourism was precisely entrusted.
In his investiture speech in July 2019, Ángel Víctor Torres reduced his commitment to "study with the tourism sector" an eco-tax, a study that was never heard of again.
Finally, Ángel Víctor Torres, in October 2019, three months after his investiture speech and three months before the first cases of covid were known, made it clear: there are other urgencies and the tourist tax will have to wait for "better times". The reason given was the bankruptcy of the operator Thomas Cook.
With the arrival of the pandemic, the parties that had defended the tourist tax before reaching the government muted the debate in a socioeconomic context marked by zero tourism.
When the debate emerged in November 2022, six months before the elections, Sí Podemos demanded that its government partners fulfill the commitment to "study" the implementation of the eco-tax, but it was too late.
Both the Minister of Tourism (ASG) and the President (PSOE) made it clear that they would not do so: the first because this issue requires a calm debate away from electoral periods and the second because the "supervening circumstances" forced to postpone "the debate" with the sector to the next legislature.
After the elections, Fernando Clavijo reached the presidency with a pact of CC, PP, ASG and AHI, the four, without fissures, against the tourist tax.
In fact, Fernando Clavijo and Casimiro Curbelo already made it clear last September, shortly after the start of the legislature, that this eco-tax would not be implemented, which they are now both willing to talk about and debate, although his partner Manuel Domínguez maintains that "there will be no tourist tax".