Spain | Mass tourism in the Canary Islands leads to protests

The islanders of the Canary Islands are helplessly exposed to several crises: increasing pollution on the islands, inadequate healthcare, rising living costs, poor working conditions, and excessively high rents. The Canarias tiene un límite (Canary Islands at the Limit) alliance blames the autonomous island community's current tourism strategy as a catalyst for these crises. It allows for increasing visitor numbers every year instead of responding to the warning signals from nature and the population.

Since 2024, the local population and the Canarian diaspora have therefore regularly taken their protest to the streets. Last Sunday, May 18, the alliance announced renewed rallies and demonstrations in the Canary Islands, in several Spanish cities, and also in Berlin against the almost unlimited European mass tourism.

In April 2024, ten activists from the Canarias Se Agota (Canarians Disappear) group went on hunger strike in Tenerife under the slogan "nuestros cuerpos por nuestra tierra" (our bodies, our land). Six of the ten activists endured the strike for 19 days. Recently, large sections of service and catering workers also went on strike for higher wages and better working conditions.

Tourism associations accuse the protesting island population of attacking their own livelihood.

During this year's Semana Santa – Holy Week, a crucial holiday for Spanish tourism – approximately 80,000 workers in the western Canary Islands went on strike, according to unions. Shortly before, unions and employers on the eastern islands reached an agreement. According to a local media outlet, workers in the hotel and restaurant sector were granted a nine percent wage increase and a one-time payment of €650.

Tourism associations accuse the protesting islanders of attacking their own livelihoods. The tourism industry accounts for approximately 35 percent of the Canary Islands' economic output. However, people working in the service and hotel sectors have felt little of this economic upturn, Alistair Adam Hernández, a member of the co-organizing organization Asocación Tinerfeña de Amigos de la Naturaleza (ATAN), told nd. "Tourism, as it is currently organized, doesn't generate added value for the islands—it extracts it," he says.

Although the Canary Islands' GDP (still by 5.4 percent in 2024, but with a downward trend) is increasing in parallel with tourism, the quality of life is declining, according to Adam Hernández. In 2024 alone, approximately 16 million people visited the archipelago off the North African coast, 21.7 percent of whom were German tourists. The local statistics institute recorded another record number in the first quarter of this year.

The labor dispute in the service sector is also occurring at a time when the housing market is tight. Rent prices in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife region rose by 21.9 percent over the past year. This is twice the increase compared to the Spanish average. One reason for this is that homeowners prefer to rent out their properties at high prices as vacation rentals rather than at moderate prices to locals, explains Adam Hernández.

The high prices of vacation rentals and the lack of rental apartments for non-tourist purposes are increasingly forcing locals out of the cities. "It is urgently necessary to stop the construction of new tourism complexes and regulate vacation rentals," states a press release from the Canary Islands at the Limit alliance. Furthermore, a tourism freeze is necessary to develop a more sustainable tourism strategy.

Nevertheless, Adam Hernández emphasizes that "the broad alliance is not personally directed against tourists who are simply taking advantage of an existing offer." Rather, it is the politicians they are holding accountable with their protest. For example, the municipal and state administration are regularly implicated in corruption scandals involving the construction and hotel industries.

Lobbying also leads to extremely liberal land-use regulations, which allow the construction of additional hotel complexes in ecologically critical locations. The alliance argues that the Canary Islands, home to approximately 2.2 million people, are particularly worthy of protection. Due to their geographical and historical-political location, they are a biodiversity hotspot and known for their multiculturalism.

The islanders have long since recognized the problem, says Adam Hernández. "There is currently a loud social debate about how we as the local population can regain more decision-making power in order to permanently change the economic model." The Canarian-born resident also hopes to gain new forces in the parliamentary opposition to address this issue.