This is what happens when things in the south of Gran Canaria are left in the hands of people from Las Palmas. The European Tourism Agency, which was expected to be established in Maspalomas, seems to be on its way to moving to Andalusia. In the summer of 2021, during a holiday in Lanzarote, Pedro Sánchez promised Ángel Víctor Torres that the Canary Islands would be Spain's only option to host the future agency. In the south of Gran Canaria, local authorities are going to start mobilising resources in Madrid and Brussels to revive the initiative, which has already been approved but is still dormant.
This commitment was made concrete in May 2022, when the President of the Canary Islands announced, during the Conference of the Outermost Regions in Martinique, that the Government of Spain officially supported the Archipelago's candidacy to host the European Tourism Agency. In addition, this candidacy received the support of the representatives of the other two States with Outermost Regions, France and Portugal.
In 2025, however, the European Union Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, Apóstolos Tzitzikostas, has expressed to the President of the Andalusian Regional Government, Juanma Moreno, his intention to develop a European tourism strategy, considering the community's extensive experience in this sector and its focus on sustainability. The Commissioner has expressed his desire to visit Andalusia.
This issue was one of the main points discussed by Juanma Moreno in his meeting with the Commissioner at the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels. The Andalusian president has begun an official trip to the Belgian capital, where he will be elected president of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) on the proposal of the European People's Party. This body has a five-year mandate, and Moreno will assume the presidency for the last two and a half years, acting as co-president in the first half.
At the end of the meeting with Apóstolos Tzitzikostas, Juanma Moreno highlighted that, for the first time, the European Commission has a commissioner exclusively dedicated to Tourism, something that Andalusia had requested due to the importance of this sector in the region, which receives 36 million visitors and generates an impact of 30.000 billion euros, representing 12% of the GDP. Both discussed the importance of establishing, for the first time in Europe, a common tourism strategy, something that had never been done before.
The Commissioner will consider "many of the contributions" coming from Andalusia, a community with a very robust tourism sector. "He has committed to visiting Andalusia and to base a large part of the European tourism strategy on what is being done in our community," said the President, who also mentioned that the Commissioner has cited as an example the Tourism Law that the Andalusian Government is working on. In addition, the "incorporation of artificial intelligence and big data in tourism management" was addressed, as well as the need to promote comprehensive tourism, which is not limited only to the coast, but is understood as "a broader industry and a value chain that generates quality employment and, ultimately, progress," concluded Juanma Moreno.
