Tens of thousands protest in Canary Islands against mass tourism • FRANCE 24 English
flag waving crowds pack the streets
across Spain’s Canary Islands organizers
of the protests say Mass tourism has
perpetuated an economic model that harms
local residents and are thus demanding
that authorities limit the number of
visitors we are seeing vacation homes
invading our Villages which is pushing
up rents young people want to become
independent and we’re finding it
increasingly difficult as we’re
thousands of kilometers away from
European territory the ter
we canarians are fed up with being
second and third class citizens we’re
fed up with overcrowding with
institutional mistreatment with low
salaries with our heritage being
destroyed with our land being bought by
foreigners because they have more money
to buy the land of our grand parents
that we have not been able to
buy demonstrators also called for a halt
to the work on two new hotels in
Tenerife the largest and most developed
island in the canaries tourism accounts
for 36% of the economy and employs four
out of 10 residents nonetheless the
amount of tourists can be
overwhelming last year some 16 million
people visited the archipelago more than
seven times its population of 2.2
million
Tens of thousands of demonstrators hit the streets of Spain’s Canary Islands on Saturday to demand changes to the model of mass tourism they say is overwhelming the Atlantic archipelago. Rallying under the slogan “The Canary Islands have a limit”, demonstrators began protesting at midday (1100 GMT), with flag-waving crowds packing the streets of the main towns across all of the archipelago’s seven islands.
#tourism #protest #Canary Islands
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14 comments
Thanks for producing this report. Mass tourism to the Canaries is a result of budget airlines who have made the cost of reaching there so inexpensive. Before the days of budget airlines, tourism was centred on mainland Spain.
It's funny how a mass crowd of over a thousand is protestesting on overcrowding of tourism.
Good! Mass tourism in Europe is killing the countries the tourists came to "visit"! The financial input doesn't make up for the damage to the residents and their quality of life!
Fine but what other industry do they have besides banana exports?
We in the US feel the same. For decades US funded the Lions share of NATO and European defense from our hard earned tax dollars…Spain has Never Paid their fair share ever yet enjoyed security.
Globalisation kaput.
These very same people voted for the commie regime that is undermining their finances, culture, and even their dignity. What have the Canary Islands to offer apart from services? Like in other parts of the world, the youth dream of a government job, learn no useful skills, abandon the rural areas… Since the 1960s, the islands have heavily relied on this unsustainable form of tourism: cleaners, drivers, reception staff, and even house owners directly benefit from this mass tourism. They vote their nepotistic friends the politicians for decades on end, only to whine afterwards. The islands are doomed to nothing but high unemployment and misery if this unsustainable tourism is curtailed… there is no fishing, no agriculture, no factories… really, if it were in the Caribbean, it would be a third world land.
It's easier instead to demand that citizens get paid directly from each tourist arrivals. U sit home to be paid for nothing except being a citizen
Message for British Brexiters the traiters remain in rainy Britain please wherever you go you are cause of trouble British teenagers are rude and disrespectful
The Government will raise taxes to makeup the shortfall in earnings from tourism 🤣
Be grateful you have any tourism. Some countries are losing tourists. It literally supports countries that are reliant on tourism .
Airbnb is also part of the problem, a business model that is based on greed !
I think they are misrepresenting themselves, they arent angry at the tourist, or shouldnt be anyways, they should be angry why the tourist euros do not end up in their pockets and be interesteg in where the money goes, the islands should be rich as heck with the amount of business thats happening there.
Touri…., liars
..