Why are residents protesting against tourism in the Canary Islands?
Residents of the Canary Islands are protesting against the current tourism model that they say has priced them out of housing and forced them into precarious work.
Thursday 15 May 2025 15:20, UK
Residents from across the Canary Islands are planning a mass demonstration聽against a tourism model they say has plundered the environment, priced them out of housing and forced them into precarious work.
Demonstrations will reportedly take place on Sunday in a number of locations across the seven main islands, which are home to 2.2 million people, as well as several places in mainland Spain and one in Berlin, Germany.
A similar demonstration took place last April, in which thousands of people took to the streets of Tenerife calling for the government to temporarily limit the arrival of tourists in order to stem a boom in short-term holiday rentals and hotel construction that is driving up housing costs for locals.
Protesters took increasingly extreme measures, with one group going on an "indefinite" hunger strike, but said the protests were not aimed at individual tourists but government officials.
This year, protesters are continuing calls for a shift to a people-centred, ecologically responsible tourism model over one that favours investors at the expense of local communities.
They are demanding a number of initiatives, including the halting and demolition of high-profile projects and hotel construction, the implementation of a tourist tax and the protection of Canarian identity and culture, according to the local newspaper, Canarian Weekly.
The tourism industry accounts for around 35% of the Canary Islands' gross domestic product (GDP). In March this year, 1.7million tourists travelled to the islands - 32% of those were from the British Isles.
Sky News spoke to local residents last year who agreed the islands can't survive without tourism. However, they were questioning whether local communities and the environment could survive if things stayed the way they were.
What's the problem? Tourism is a 'cash cow' - but not for locals
If you're looking for what's behind the wave of protests, you need to look back decades, Sharon Backhouse told Sky News last year.
Along with her Canarian husband, she owns GeoTenerife, which runs science field trips and training camps in the Canary Islands and conducts research into sustainable tourism.
The tourism model in the Canary Islands hasn't been updated since before the tourism boom of the 1980s, when the islands were "trying desperately" to attract investment, she explained.
The answer back then was a model that was "incredibly generous" to investors, who only pay 4% tax and can send the profits earned in the Canaries back to the firm's home country, Ms Backhouse explained.
But the model hasn't changed.
That's created a situation where "more and more of these giant, all inclusive resort hotels" are being built, and the proceeds of this "incredible cash cow" aren't shared equitably with the local population, she said.
"It is absurd to have a system where so much money is in the hands of a very few extremely powerful groups, and is then funnelled away from the Canary Islands," she said.
'Shanty towns' in the shadow of luxury
One of the main issues is the dearth of affordable or social housing, Andy Ward, director of Tenerife Estate Agents, told Sky News last year.
"The governments here have completely neglected this need, instead selling land for more hotels and selling land for luxury villas and high-end apartments, which locals are unable to afford."
What caused anger was property managers renting out properties to tourists that are "completely inappropriate and inadequate", such as small apartments in residential buildings.
The regulations on short-term lets "are a complete mess and a mish-mash", Mr Ward said. Landlords aren't incentivised to let their properties long-term because they must sign up to long leases, and if tenants default on the rent it can take 18 months to evict them.
"Shanty towns" is what Ms Backhouse calls them, built in the shadow of "uber luxury hotels".
Coupled with this, Mr Ward said the average wage for restaurant staff and cleaners was between €1,050 (£855) and €1,300 (£1,095) a month, while the cost of renting an apartment can be almost as much.
A report by the environmental group Ecologists in Action showed more than a third of the population of the Canary Islands - nearly 800,000 people - are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
The environmental cost of tourism
The Canary Islands are a "biodiversity jewel in the Atlantic", Ms Backhouse said - but they haven't been fully protected or valued.
She said the building of new tourist resorts has an environmental cost as "beautiful landscapes are cemented over" - and the costs only mounts once they open.
Ms Backhouse said politicians have said in the past that the development of controversial hotel resorts can't be stopped "just because of a weed".
But she argued that these high-profile projects interfere with the entire ecosystem.
"The problem with these resorts is that we just don't have enough resources in terms of water, what happens to all the rubbish, how is it all recycled," she said.
"Locals are feeling disenfranchised from their spaces because it all becomes tourist territory. Towns and villages that locals grew up in or would go on holiday in suddenly are completely unrecognisable."
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What solutions are on the table?
The proposal of implementing a tourist tax intensified after last year's protest. But no rules applying to the entire region have been put in place.
A €0.15 per day tourist fee has been implemented in the town of Mogan in Gran Canaria, but this was after much backlash by the Federation of Hospitality and Tourism Entrepreneurs of Las Palmas - a professional organisation that represents tourism businesses in the province.
The tax was initially suspended by a judge on the island a day after being introduced, but was reinstated in March following another court ruling.
Ms Backhouse said the hotel industry was against the idea of a tourist tax and the government was nervous about it.
But research from the Tourist Spending Survey by the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics (ISTAC), indicates it wouldn't put tourists off.
"I think the reality is very few people will cancel their holiday because they have to pay a little bit of money that goes towards protecting the landscapes they're coming to see," she said.
Impending crackdown on holiday homes
On 15 May this year, the Canary Islands regional tourism chief Jessica de Leon held a seminar to discuss a draft law which aims to implement stricter controls on the expansion of holiday homes.
Under the law, dubbed the Vacation Rental Law, newly built properties will be banned from being used by tourists for 10 years after construction. It will also prohibit entire residential buildings from being converted into holiday lets.
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The government argues that the law will prevent developers from designing and selling properties explicitly for tourist rental use from the outset, which has driven up property prices and distorted the housing market, and curb the spread of unregulated tourist accommodations disguised as residential buildings
Officials are pushing for the law to pass in parliament by the end of 2025, according to Canarian Weekly.