The Canarian authorities are starting this week the promotional activities for tourism at the World Travel Market with the question of whether anti-tourism activists will appear as an audience, an issue that has marked the agenda of the sector in the islands since last April. Sources from groups that are part of the agenda in favour of tourismophobia told Maspalomas2024H that "something is planned".
The activists, a group mostly made up of public employees, are very lost. In reality, tourismophobia has been generated by the Canary REF, a tax system very similar to that of Northern Ireland, which encourages only the owners of companies, generating cascading corporate structures, not to pay taxes and to dedicate their investments to buying bricks and mortar while the Canarians are content with drinking the hyper-sugary Strawberry Clipper and which they call a national soft drink in their ignorance, the product of a chaotic and undemanding educational system in the hands of equally mediocre teachers (public employees). With the increase in tax pressure in countries like Italy, waves of transalpine lynxes have arrived taking advantage of that same tax scheme.
Peter de Brine, head of the sustainable tourism agenda at Unesco, an organisation that has a centre based in the Gabete Literario in Gran Canaria and does not want to know anything about this matter because it has executives with companies in the sector, says, "what we are seeing is that we are exceeding a threshold of tolerance in these destinations," he says. As on other occasions, the fact that there are Canarian media will not prevent content from going viral that questions the role of the industry at a time when the owners of apartments in Las Palmas with interests in the south of Gran Canaria are generating legal problems regarding the structure of the business.
Rising visitor numbers, rising house prices and an increase in selfie-seeking tourists at places like the Maspalomas Dunes have helped create situations that are "totally unbalanced", according to Unesco, adding that if these problems are not addressed, the Canarian wave of protests against mass tourism, which began in Tenerife, could spread across Europe. Activists remain largely silent on the WTM in London, where protests have taken place.
Since April, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of the Canary Islands demanding restrictions on mass tourism and a rethinking of a business model that, according to them, has driven up housing prices and forced local people out of cities.
In southern Gran Canaria, organisers have stressed that the protests are not against tourism per se, but rather a call for a more balanced approach. Tourism has exacerbated existing concerns about housing affordability, as the proliferation of short-term accommodation pushes local residents out of the market. “I think that has added a lot of anxiety and frustration to people living in these destinations,” says De Brine, head of sustainable tourism at Unesco.
