Canary Islands protesters list 3 categories ‘devouring’ territory | World | News

One of the groups organising the protest expected to be attended by many in the Canary Islands listed three categories it believes are ruining the region.

ATAN (Tenerife Friends of Nature Association) named overtourism as the main factor to blame for issues being experienced in Tenerife.

However, the organisation also added digital nomads and European settlers with high purchasing power to the groups guilty of worsening the lives of locals on the Canaries.

An ATAN spokesperson told Express.co.uk: “The problem is due to the chosen model of mass tourism, which also attracts unscrupulous investments and investors and a tourist profile that is mostly disrespectful of the environment and the people who live on these islands.

“The number of tourists is too high for an island territory, in addition to digital nomads and European settlers who stay on the islands with incomes and purchasing power far higher than those of the islanders, so they have access to housing and land to the detriment of the local population.” 

The current tourism model, the organisation went on to claim, is “devouring” the islands.

ATAN said: “We need quality tourism that respects natural resources and does not continue to devour the territory of our archipelago. For this, we need rules that limit urban growth, to limit tourist growth, and to establish more areas subject to protection.”

Tenerife alone welcomed an average of five million tourists every year, while the Canary Islands as a whole counted in 2023 13.9 million tourists.

ATAN branded the current tourism situation “completely unsustainable” – a view embraced also by another organisation working to set up the upcoming protest, the Fundación Telesforo Bravo. 

Jaime Coello Bravo, the director of this association, described the mass tourism model on the islands as “a machine for the destruction of our ecosystems and a factory of poverty”.

Speaking about the main damages he believes mass tourism is doing to Tenerife, he told Express.co.uk: “On the one hand, it is leading to the collapse of terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The pressure of millions of visitors on protected natural areas is damaging or causing the disappearance of valuable natural heritage, sometimes irreversibly.

“On the other hand, it increases the problem of road congestion by adding thousands of rental vehicles to already saturated roads. The increase in the number of tourists buying or renting properties in the islands is driving up prices in the property market, so local residents with lower salaries have nowhere to live. 

“Finally, the new residents add undue pressure on the public health and education systems. The Canary Islands is one of the European regions with the highest number of people in poverty or at risk of social exclusion.”

A report by the environmental group Ecologists in Action claimed that, despite record numbers achieved in the tourism sector, nearly 800,000 people across the archipelago are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

The protest, tipped to include slogans reading, “The Canary Islands are not for sale”, will come as the president of the archipelago, Fernando Clavijo, asked the tourism sector to “democratise” wealth.