For some, talking about vacation homes is talking about the housing problem because for them it is to blame for the lack of housing despite the fact that there are more empty homes due to the lack of legal security for the tenant against squatters or they even prefer not to look at the data of how much the population has grown in recent years.
And of course they are wrong!
Others comment on a viral publication of a photo with a wall full of key boxes on the exteriors of apartment complexes with the text.
People used to live here.
And of course, they are wrong again.
The reality of that photo is that those apartments were never housing, in fact they were born to exclusively accommodate tourists.
Small tourist complexes that the tourism employers sold by units as soon as they saw the wolf's ears in the first major tourism crisis back in the 90s.
Closed apartments and unemployment, a lot of unemployment, because when tourism fails us, that's all that's left, unemployment, bank foreclosures, etc.
That is why the tourism employers began to get rid of apartment complexes, apartment by apartment, breaking the principle of unity of exploitation to sell them in small parts knowing that they did not comply with any residential standards, whether due to square meters, the land where they were located, etc.
I have always been clear that the tourism employers are the main culprit of this problem that they now complain so much about, and I told them so years ago.
What they did not expect was that these obsolete apartments that they were selling one by one would propose a different tourism model that would not be under their control and that is why they do not like vacation homes.
Vacation homes V.V. is the type of tourism model that we have always wanted.
A tourism model exploited by us personally and that leaves its money on the island, goes shopping at the corner supermarket, to shops or to have breakfast, lunch or dinner in the many establishments in Lanzarote.
Without a doubt, vacation homes are a tourism model that has taken tourists out of hotels to take them to our towns and with them extra economy with which many can live a little more comfortably or pay for our children's studies.
All this compared to a tourist staying in the hotel, who has breakfast, lunch, dinner in the same hotel, where they also have entertainment, restaurants, shops, beauty centers, etc.
A tourism model designed so that the tourist does not leave a penny outside the hotel, outside their control, that is why I am not surprised that they now applaud us for this draft law on vacation tourism that mortally wounds vacation homes.
Of course, the good thing about this law is that Coalición Canaria is not afraid to open debate and put sanity in the face of recent years where V.V. has grown excessively without control and without inspections.
And it has caused many people to think that they can turn their garage into tourist accommodation even if it is a basement, something that cannot be because we need to offer accommodation and service quality.
But of course, one thing is not being afraid and another is opening a debate with a law that mortally wounds vacation tourism with basic rules contrary to the urban reality.
For example, we have Puerto del Carmen, where many apartments in old tourist complexes are only 35 square meters, being excluded from the possibility of exploiting them via vacation homes and at the same time excluded from converting them into residential because they also do not comply with basic habitability standards for families.
Or even the sustainability criteria knowing that many apartments will never have the possibility of installing solar panels, therefore, they will also be left out.
Puerto del Carmen will not be worth renting or living in, and therefore we can only make a nice dovecote or return to the 90s when the individually sold apartments were rented from abroad, out of all control and again leaving the tourist's money far from our hands.
Because some do not believe it, vacation tourism is not something new, it began long before there was any law regulating it and that in the first attempt at regulation they insisted on taking this model out of the tourist areas and it ended in a legal failure. Will it happen with this future law? If it is reversed and one of consensus is created with the citizens, not with the tourism employers?
Vacation homes are not to blame for the lack of housing, there are many empty homes and an exaggerated population increase. Tías has more than 2000 new residents in recent years.
Nor have we been able to promote the construction of houses for decades while we allow the tourism employers to build new hotels without compensation, as was done in the 70s, when hotels created housing for their employees and free transportation of staff from Arrecife or Tías to Puerto del Carmen.
Of course everything was much better before than now.
Currently, populist parties such as the PSOE seem to be concerned about the tourist saturation of the island and demand that tourist beds not be increased in places where they are not in power.
While in Tías, governed by the PSOE, new hotel facilities are being projected with the justification that there are numerous tourist beds free from the complexes that the employers sold years ago, while now it is questioned that we use our houses to receive tourists.
There is no doubt. The PSOE has always affirmed something and has done the opposite.
Amado Vizcaíno
