Between 2015 and 2023, the Urban Planning Department in Las Palmas was in the hands of Podemos and this Thursday the PSOE in Las Palmas confirmed that there are more holiday homes than hotel beds in that city. The same thing that the heirs of the protected civil servants and administrative staff who lived off Franco's regime and bought apartments in the south of Gran Canaria want to do: live for free in the middle of the destination in areas such as Playa del Inglés, San Agustin or Meloneras. Only the resistance of the residents of the south of Gran Canaria can stop the collapse of what remains of the island's offer because the employers are in their own world diversifying the profits of Maspalomas in places such as Fuerteventura, Lanzarote or Cape Verde.
In Las Palmas, they do not want the same development for the south of the island that their neighbours who own apartments operating as homes prefer. The Playita de Las Canteras suffers from one of the most pronounced settlement imbalances in the Canary Islands. Only in the Las Canteras beach (it does not have a blue flag and has the El Confital part contaminated), half of the rentals are for holiday homes, with serious damage to the provision of services such as cleaning, security, lighting and rest against noise (sound). Las Palmas is in an expansive dynamic of the supply of tourist or holiday homes, so that it has gone from locating a volume of 2.050 units in August 2020 to hosting 4.716 in October 2024, according to the General Tourist Registry of the Canary Islands. “This rate of growth is only comparable to that in tourist towns such as San Bartolomé de Tirajana or Adeje,” said Mauricio Roque, Councillor for Planning in Las Palmas.
The City Council of the political capital of Gran Canaria has confirmed that it has experienced a significant increase in the supply of tourist accommodation, exceeding ten thousand places during the summer of 2024. The increase, compared to the same period of the previous year, is 909 places - which represents a growth of 9,4%. This increase in VV competes directly with hotel places, which in the case of Las Palmas registered a decrease: it went from 6.485 during the third quarter of last year to 6.308 in the period between July, August and September, which reflects a trend that is repeated in other important tourist destinations.
The increase in holiday accommodation in the Canary Islands is rapidly approaching the number of hotel beds, which has remained relatively stable over the last decade. This has led to tensions within the tourism sector and among residents, who see how the growth of holiday homes affects the availability of affordable housing. This phenomenon not only increases the capacity to accommodate tourists, but also poses challenges in terms of housing accessibility and coexistence with local residents. In this regard, Exceltur has expressed its concern this Wednesday about the "worrying episodes of citizen protest" to tourist activity that are taking place in some destinations and that began on April 20 with several mass demonstrations in the Canary Islands.
