The crowded Canary Islands demonstrations on April 20 against tourist overcrowding and its consequences on the population's quality of life - especially in access to housing - and on the territory and the environment, have had their replicas in other very relevant tourist destinations in other communities that suffer similar problems. Such as Mallorca, at the end of last May, or, more recently, Malaga and Cadiz. In addition, there have been protests in San Sebastian, Cantabria and some neighborhoods of Madrid. And new calls have been announced throughout this month of July in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.
In Europe, different cities -Ámsterdam, Paris, Florence…-, are beginning to implement policies that restrict vacation rentals and their platforms. In the Spanish State, Barcelona also proposes it forcefully. The central government and several autonomous communities are beginning to legislate to curb the expansion of vacation homes. The solutions are not easy. And, surely, they require a deep reflection and a great agreement with multiple decisions, not only the implementation of specific actions. And the visualization of its results will occur in the short, medium and long term. What is not valid is immobility.
Tourism recovers worldwide after the paralysis caused by the immobility imposed to try to stop the ravages of Covid 19 in 2020. According to data from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in this 2024 it will already be above pre-pandemic levels. Last 2023, revenues from international tourism reached 1.4 trillion dollars, approximately 93% of the 1.5 trillion dollars earned by destinations in 2019. Indicating the UNWTO that estimates of the economic contribution of tourism, measured in terms of direct gross domestic product (GDP), amount to 3.3 trillion dollars in 2023, 3% of world GDP.
In the Spanish State, in 2023 more than 85 million tourists were exceeded, the highest data recorded historically. With a record also of spending, more than 108,000 million euros, according to data from the INE. With Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands as the first destinations. Catalonia leads the spending of visitors, with 20,877 million euros, followed very closely by the Canary Islands (20,333 million) and, already below twenty thousand, the Balearic Islands (17,722) and Andalusia (15,361). In the first five months of the year, the Islands have received 6.4 million tourists, an increase of more than 10% compared to the same period of 2023, and with spending exceeding 9,600 million euros.
Social welfare
Its enormous influence on GDP and employment in the Canary Islands is little or nothing debatable. The transformations that it helped to produce in a deeply backward society, without infrastructure and impoverished, cyclically forced to emigration, also. It is fair to recognize that the modification of the economic model contributed decisively to improving the welfare of the population in the Islands from the sixties of the last century.
What should not hide the dysfunctions that it has produced, including the excessive occupation of the territory, especially the coasts, the high electricity and water consumption or the high generation of waste; without intending to suggest that any other human economic activity -industry, agriculture or livestock- does not also produce negative effects on the territory and the environment. Likewise, tourism has been promoting a population growth that is not very harmonious and a progressive urban touristification that fills neighborhoods, eliminates a good part of its own commercial fabric and expels the local population due to the impossibility of accessing housing due to the significant increase in its prices. In a framework, in addition, of low qualification, reduced salaries and a lot of rotation in jobs.
I am convinced that tourism will only have a future if it is fully sustainable, if it is respectful of the territory and the environment. And if, in addition, the local population considers that it is mostly beneficial, that it has a positive impact on the collective well-being of all Canarians. The model of indefinite growth in the number of visitors is completely unsustainable.
Essential sustainability
For this reason, from Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista, we have been raising the need for a Great Canary Agreement on Tourism; we did it in our electoral program of the autonomous elections of 2023 and we continue to claim it today. Oriented towards its sustainability, decarbonization and digitalization. This requires energy actions and in the field of mobility, as well as those related to water or waste management. Considering fully valid what is included in the tourism planning guidelines of 2003 when they bet that the sector “without increasing the pressure on the environment, produces greater economic and social benefits, higher level of employment, higher level of spending and better distributed”.
It is not the first time that the Canary Islands has debated tourism. It did so, at the beginning of the century, with the participation of parties, unions, business organizations, island councils and municipalities, universities, environmental groups, professional associations… Promoting from the Government Law 6/2001 of urgent measures in Matters of Territorial Planning and Tourism of the Canary Islands, better known as a moratorium -which declassified 400,000 beds, including the 20,000 of Veneguera, whose protection was definitively shielded in Law 6/2003 declaring its ravine as a protected natural space-. Culminating with the approval of the tourism planning guidelines in 2003, unanimously by the Canary Islands Parliament. A moratorium perfectly articulated in its legal aspects, which did not cost a euro to the Canary Islands public coffers: all the lawsuits filed were ruled in the courts favorably to the Government. Today it is worth raising it again.
We consider very positive the broad mobilization that took place in the Canary Islands on 20A, which goes beyond any acronym, any attempt to own it. It was a broad popular expression of protest, plural in its contents and in its demands, driven by people and groups that knew how to accurately measure the presence of a fairly widespread feeling of concern and weariness.
It is time to reflect and act again on tourism, promoting consensus on the future of the sector, from our ability to make our own decisions as a people. Tourism is an irreplaceable activity for the Canary Islands, a vanguard in this area worldwide, and, precisely for that reason, because it is our most strategic sector, we have to take care of it and guarantee its future, which has to be sustainable, digitalized and decarbonized.
There are numerous measures that, for some time, we have put on the table in this essential and transcendental debate. Put limits on the growth of new facilities and hotel beds; adequately regulate vacation rentals, in a Canary Islands that already exceeds 46,000 tourist homes; substantially improve the living conditions -type of day, schedules and salaries- of its workers, with special attention to those who perform more arduous tasks; incorporate a final tax to those who visit us, aimed at digitalization, decarbonization, the protection of protected spaces and agricultural areas, the promotion of sustainable, responsible and quality tourism.
I raise all these proposals from the full conviction that tourism will continue to be the lung of the Canary Islands economy. But also, being aware that, if some of its major dysfunctions are not tempered and reduced, it can generate an increasing rejection of broad layers of society in the Islands, as has been happening in many parts of the world. We are in time to avoid it, so that the future of the sector and the Canary Islands is better than the present, making tourism more sustainable and much more decisive in increasing the well-being of the men and women of this land.
