Around 60,000 people took part in the various events demonstrations on the eight islands of Canaries, to protest against mass tourism. The event recorded the largest presence in Santa Cruz in Tenerife where, according to official figures, 30 thousand took to the streets and 15 thousand in Las Palmas in Gran Canaria. The aerial images exchanged on social networks and appearing on TV show crowded streets and snakes of people also in the various other Iberian cities and European capitals that have joined the mobilization: Malaga, Granada, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, London and Berlin.
The protest
«Canarias holds a limit!» (The Canaries have a limit!) is the slogan chanted by tens of thousands of people in simultaneous marches organized on the eight islands of the Canary archipelago, in a mobilization as a sign of protest against mass tourism and its consequences: exploitation of the environment and natural resources and a development model that disfigures and impoverishes the territory.
The call came from ecological associations and social with the aim of saying enough to excess tourism on the islands, branded as “unsustainable and for the benefit of a few, which does not have positive repercussions on the islands, expels residents and makes coexistence difficult”.
And it is precisely the residents of the archipelago who are forcefully asking for a change of pace, demanding a different development model for the sector which is central to the Canary Islands’ economy: 40% of the islands’ workforce is employed in tourism and the sector contributes 36% of GDP. The argument, however, is that as set up and developed the system «does not distribute wealth among the population – explains Pilar Arteta, an ecologist from Lanzarote – but causes an escalation in housing prices and causes the worsening of inequalities, with the risk of social exclusion of 33% of the population”.
Other indicative details emerge from the latest Arope annual report on ‘Poverty in Spain’, according to which in 2023 the Canary Islands recorded the highest number of tourist arrivals in Spain with 13.9 million visitors out of a resident population of 2.2 million which however has recorded the highest rates of poverty where up to 33% of the population is at risk of marginalization.
The protesters are calling for “immediate measures” such as the establishment of an ecotax for tourists, a tourism moratorium and laws allowing residents and workers preferential access to housing on the islands.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Read the full article at
Leggo.it
