They march against mass tourism in the Canary Islands

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE (EFE).— Thousands of people took to the streets yesterday on the eight Canary Islands to ask in unison for a change in the mass tourism and, by extension, socioeconomic model of the archipelago in an event that evokes the great historical mobilizations experienced in the town.

At noon, the demonstrations called under the slogan “The Canary Islands have a limit” began, on a day that also took place in different Spanish and European cities.

Furthermore, the protest reached Madrid with a rally in Puerta del Sol to criticize an economic model that is “expelling” them from their land.

“Today we are here because we cannot be there,” said the person in charge of reading the manifesto in Madrid.

In Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the largest city in the Spanish archipelago known for its tourism offering, thousands demonstrated to demand another model of tourism offering.

The germ of the marches is the denunciation of the exhaustion of the model of the economic engine of the islands (which represents 35% of the Gross Domestic Product of the Canary Islands and close to 40% of employment) and the demand for a moratorium, an ecotax and the regulation of the purchase of housing from foreigners.

As the weeks have passed, the debate has spread to high poverty rates, low salaries, escalating rental prices and the saturation of roads and natural spaces.

The marches add to the complaints of citizens in other Spanish regions where tourism is causing these same problems, such as the Balearic Islands, where it is increasingly common for temporary workers to have to stay in cars or caravans due to the impossibility of paying the rent. rental of a property.

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