What was the problem? The increase in tourism competitiveness of the Canary Islands has coincided since 2014 with the increase in tension on the international stage. The islands have benefited from the Arab springs and the existence of Daesh since tourism that was planned to develop in North Africa and Turkey has gone to the islands. Italian professionals persecuted in their country for not paying taxes and operating in markets such as Tunisia have ended up with pockets full of money in the Canary Islands, causing citizen unrest due to their investments in hospitality and the purchase of properties to dedicate them to vacation rentals, allowing them in dedicated spaces wholesale tourism coexists with other residential areas and expels the islanders from their rented homes.
The membership of the Canary Islands as an integral part of Spain to organizations such as the European Union and NATO make the island market a useful objective. These activities can undermine economic competitiveness, especially with regard to strategic sectors such as transportation in general terms. Disinformation campaigns about the Canary Islands destination have a clear impact on the destination since they seek to distort reality through manipulated content. The Minister of Tourism of the Government of the Canary Islands, Jessica de León, attacked this Monday the campaigns against the island destination since "the tourism paradigm has already changed: the Canary Islands are the center and this government has said it loud and clear, this is inadmissible ".
Citizen entities have reacted with mobilizations throughout the month of April on all the islands. The authorities have begun to implement actions to stop what appears to be interference in internal affairs with the help of the British tabloid press, which has found in tourismphobia an important source of income in digital traffic, scaring tourists who come to the islands. Jet2, the second most important tour operator in Maspalomas, has announced the suspension of investments. The hotel employers remain silent.
In the Canary Islands on April 20 there are demonstrations on all the islands against tourism. This week on social networks a Russia Today report on tourism in Puerto Rico, USA, was compared with that of the Canary Islands. The Canary Islands authorities have launched a legal offensive to stop tourismphobia but until April 21 on the islands what there is would be the result of ehybrid strategies that, through coordinated and multidimensional actions, try to exploit the vulnerability of the tourism business on the islands and its institutions with the objective of political, social or economic destabilization or coercion. These strategies are characterized by the difficulty of attributing authorship and by using means that may include, in addition to conventional actions, others such as disinformation campaigns or economic coercion.
In this sense, the cognitive sphere is one more space in which to exert influence, which is added to the traditional physical spheres: land, sea and air. The elements that are inherent to a disinformation campaign are the desire to generate confusion and undermine social cohesion; the coordinated use of different media for the creation and dissemination of content aimed at broad audiences; and malicious intent for the purpose of discrediting or influencing the target of the attack. Thus, disinformation campaigns pose a serious threat to electoral processes such as those in June of the European elections.
