Southern Gran Canaria faces a largely unexamined employment risk if a return of part of the Venezuelan diaspora materializes. Nearly 100.000 Venezuelan citizens work in the Canary Islands and are registered with Social Security, making them one of the archipelago's largest foreign communities. In tourist municipalities in southern Gran Canaria—San Bartolomé de Tirajana, Mogán, and Santa Lucía—their presence is particularly strong in the hospitality, restaurant, cleaning, and other tourism-related support sectors.
The Canary Islands' hospitality industry employs around 175.000 workers, of whom more than 40 percent are of foreign origin. That equates to approximately 70.000 people not born in Spain supporting the islands' main economic sector.
In areas such as Playa del Inglés, Maspalomas or Puerto Rico, the actual proportion of foreign labor is higher than the regional average and approaches 50 percent in some subsectors, especially in categories such as waiters, kitchen assistants and chambermaids.
If only 10 percent of Venezuelan workers currently employed in the Canary Islands were to choose to return to their country, the potential exodus would be around 10.000 people. Based on the actual sectoral weight, between 6.000 and 7.000 of those jobs would be directly related to the hospitality and restaurant industry.
In the south of Gran Canaria, where the labor market is tighter and more seasonal, this loss would have an immediate impact on the supply of available jobs in the middle of the peak season.
This adjustment would not necessarily imply an automatic salary increase. Recent experience shows that the Canary Islands' hospitality sector is already operating under structural pressures. In March of the last year for which data is available, tourism employment grew year-on-year, but the sector lost more than 13.000 members in net terms, indicating retention and turnover problems even before any migration shock.
The average monthly salary in the hospitality sector in the Canary Islands is around 1.500–1.600 euros gross, between 10 and 15 percent below the national average.
The exodus of Venezuelan workers could have a perverse effect on wages. Initially, the labor shortage would put upward pressure on hiring, with estimated increases of between 10 and 20 percent to fill critical vacancies.
However, that pressure would be quickly neutralized if some of that workforce did not leave the Archipelago, but instead found employment in other less demanding or better-paid sectors, such as logistics, commerce, personal services, or even the informal economy.
In that scenario, the hospitality sector would lose workers without gaining any real bargaining power. The result would be a partial, disorganized increase in labor costs, concentrated only in certain profiles, while other positions would remain unfilled or be filled by less qualified workers.
For tourism businesses in southern Gran Canaria, this translates into lower productivity per employee and greater pressure on margins, especially in a context of rising energy, food, and financial costs.
In macroeconomic terms, the loss of 7.000 hospitality workers represents just 0,4 percent of total tourism employment in the Canary Islands, but accounts for approximately 10–15 percent of the foreign workforce active in the sector. In mature tourism economies highly dependent on labor, such as that of southern Gran Canaria, these percentages have non-linear effects: fewer operational beds, lower table turnover, a reduction in complementary services, and ultimately, lower revenue per tourist.
The eventual return of the Venezuelan diaspora would therefore not be a neutral phenomenon. For southern Gran Canaria, it presents a classic dilemma for advanced tourism economies: without an active policy on wages, housing, and working conditions, the departure of workers does not correct historical imbalances, but rather amplifies them. The risk is not only paying more, but also producing less.
