The Socialist Parliamentary Group has demanded this Wednesday in the Plenary of the Regional Chamber the creation of a negotiation table with all political forces to implement a tourism tax in the Canary Islands. Thus, it has proposed, through a motion, to initiate a round of consultations with all the political forces present in the Regional Chamber, with a view to presenting a legislative initiative that configures a fiscal instrument that taxes tourist overnight stays in the Canary Islands, excluding Canarian residents from such taxation.
The motion, rejected by the Canarian Coalition (CC), Popular Party (PP) and the political parties that support the Canarian Government, was defended by the Finance Spokesperson of the Socialist Group, Manuel Hernández, who expressed his concern about the “inefficient” budget execution of 2024 and the similar situation that may arise in 2025.
Hernández explained that the socialist motion notes the low budget execution of the 2024 Financial Year, which implies urging the Government of the Canary Islands to implement mechanisms that improve the management of public funds, also including the improvement of the execution of European funds, especially those linked to the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism.
In addition, the “zero effectiveness” in the management of public resources that has resulted from the “mammoth” structure of the Canarian Government is noted, “which obliges us to urge the current Government to resize it to levels similar to those of the past legislature.”
The socialist deputy highlighted the importance of the Autonomous Community developing a fiscal policy, “non-existent today”, in which progressivity constitutes the nuclear element on which all its policies are articulated, “which urges us to urge the Government to, within the impulse of that fair fiscal policy, initiate a round of consultations with all the forces with parliamentary representation, with the aim of implementing a tax that taxes tourist overnight stays in the Canary Islands with the exclusion of residents in the islands.”
The Finance Spokesperson of the Socialist Group recalled that the Canarian Government failed to execute 1,089 million euros in 2023, and 1,330 million euros in 2024. “More than 2,400 million euros that have not translated in these last two years into improvement and reinforcement of our public services, in boosting our productive fabric or in improving the quality of life of Canarians.”
For Hernández, faced with this “terrible management” by the Canarian Government, Parliament can either “look the other way” and assume inefficiency in management as something normal in the current Government of the Canary Islands, or, on the contrary, “not only take note of the failure in budget execution, recognized by the Minister of Finance herself, but take the initiative to correct this drift that ultimately harms the citizens of the Canary Islands. And this is what this motion intends.”
In this sense, he once again denounced that the citizens of the Canary Islands are facing the “most expensive, most ineffective and inefficient” Government of the Canary Islands in the history of our autonomous community, and that this is reflected in the fact that the Canary Islands achieved in 2024 a budget execution that is the worst data in the history of the Archipelago and of the last twelve years.
“And they have achieved this very bad data with a mammoth government, the largest in our autonomous community and the one that costs the citizens of the islands the most money,” he stressed.
In his opinion, the budget execution itself shows that, far from improving effectiveness and efficiency in management, “the oversized structure of the Government, with general directorates empty of content, commissioners who go their own way and vice-councils, is being a burden for the islands.”
For Hernández, the budget execution of 2024 confirms that the Government of the Canary Islands has been “unable to guarantee that resources reach where they are most needed; unable to collect from those who have the most; and unable to redistribute public resources among those who need them most. And the worrying thing is that it is on track to repeat it in 2025.”
