Southern Gran Canaria, that crust of land surrounded by ocean, suffers today not from a lack of waves but from a lack of fiscal judgment. The draft order establishing the AIEM modules for 2026 is an administrative fossil that the government intends to maintain with minor corrections, like repainting a façade whose structure is cracking. But the rift is deep, and what's at stake isn't a percentage increase or decrease, but the economic dignity of an archipelago burdened by a double litany: insularity and the impossibility of competing on equal terms. Here's where you can submit your objections until October 21st.No official statement has been issued regarding the tariff, which is of such concern to the European Commission's DG Grow, because the islanders had always stated in Brussels that everyone on the islands was in favor of this anti-family and anti-tourism tax.
A text signed by businessman and now Deputy Minister of Finance Gabriel Mejías speaks of gender equality, childhood, and family in the report: it states that the AIEM does not affect them. But a regulatory framework is not necessary for it to be felt on the breakfast plate, in the cost of disposing of school supplies, in the price of the menu that devours the wallet after a trip to Spain. On a small island, every tariff seeps into domestic pockets like a fine tide. Regional governments often use the Economic and Fiscal Regime (REF) as a shield, an excuse, a safety net. But a leaky shield protects nothing. Since the AIEM's existence, it has generated bureaucratic rent for those who manage the tax flow, not a competitive advantage for those who make a living from production or trade.
The supporting report barely moves any accounting figures; however, every euro collected drains a reserve of profit for SMEs that import supplies, ingredients, or capital goods. This AIEM, which presents itself as a "protector of local producers," is nothing more than an internal customs office in disguise. A bureaucratic barrier that, in times of global supply chains, increases the cost of importing essential goods for production, sale, or service. The cost of importing a spare part, a tool, a piece of technology, or even perishable food is already a huge burden due to the geography; adding an island tax to this makes island producers subject to a system that charges them for breathing.
Because the worst thing isn't the tariff itself: it's its symbolic function. It's the tacit declaration that the Canary Islands can't compete. That they must take refuge behind a tax wall. That foreign markets must pay for their presence. And who pays for that wall? The citizen, the hotelier, the small importer who can't claim "protection" but rather "overpricing."
Authentic reform doesn't lie in patching up the modules. It's not enough to change figures on paper and call a mild adjustment "modernization." What's needed is to rethink the tax: review it, limit its application, transfer its cost to those who can afford it—those who trade in large volumes—and include real exceptions for the import of productive inputs. Because the real enemy isn't imports, but the tax that punishes island life. Maintaining the AIEM without a profound reform is to continue saying: "this territory can't compete." And to write it not as a sentence, but as a memory. Tomorrow, the Canary Islands could be an island that produces with fewer obstacles, but today it once again demonstrates that, in the fiscal labyrinth, even the wind must pay a toll.
