When has there been a debate on British TV about Tenerife residents' criticism of tourism visiting Tenerife? This year. And does this contaminate the rest of the archipelago, starting with Gran Canaria? Yes, because in Las Palmas they have found that one way to gain a digital audience in the media is to talk about this issue. But there is more: How does an island without beaches have more blue flags than Gran Canaria on its coastline? And it has 52 black spots so it releases untreated sewage. Poor land planning has placed Tenerife as a failed tourism engine in the Canary Islands, eating into the south of Gran Canaria markets such as the British, the German and any day now the Nordic. Tourism in Tenerife is a headless chicken that has generated tourismphobia on all the islands: the entire island is stuck because in the boom season they started to build a series of infrastructures that make no sense, such as the Los Rodeos airport, which, statistics in hand, Aena should have closed decades ago. But no: you have to add to overcome the enemy.
Maspalomas asks to be the headquarters of the European Tourism Agency and Tenerife arises asking for the same. Gran Canaria wants a stage of the Cycling Tour of Spain and Tenerife appears saying the same thing. A world motorsport championship emerges in Gran Canaria and Tenerife asks to share the test. LaLiga Futures was created in Maspalomas and LaLiga Genuine emerged in Tenerife, by the way, a total failure.
This Saturday, April 20, there is a demonstration in the Canary Islands against 73% of the GDP of the islands on 3% of the island territory generating 40% of the taxes with which salaries are paid to 240.000 civil servants in the archipelago. That is to say, from Tenerife, an attack against the tourism industry, pioneered by Maspalomas, is being addressed on the island of Gran Canaria. Mine for me and yours for both of us. Tenerife has ended up scaring the Canaries away from the affection that visitors deserve in that imperial need to control everything that passes through the islands.
The president of the Federation of Hospitality and Tourism Entrepreneurs (FEHT) of Las Palmas, José María Mañaricua, said this April that the problems in the Canary Islands have their origins in the problems of Tenerife and he is right when he states that "the perception of the population and the tourist load is different depending on the islands" and that Gran Canaria does not have problems like that of Cuna del Alma, the La Tejita hotel or the port of Fonsalía and, therefore, "the social response is not the same in all the islands, is being more critical in Tenerife and Lanzarote".
