30,000 protest against mass tourism and new hotel projects in the Canary Islands
Around 30,000 people took to the streets across the Canary Islands yesterday, Sunday, in a coordinated wave of protests against mass tourism, demanding urgent action to protect the region’s natural resources and to improve housing and the quality of life for residents.
Under the banner “Canarias tiene un límite” (“The Canary Islands Have a Limit”), demonstrators called for a tourism model that is more sustainable and responsive to the archipelago’s environmental and social constraints. The protests, the third major mobilisation of this kind, were held simultaneously in all of the islands at 11:00am.
Activist Helena Espinosa, from the environmental group ATAN, said: “We’re not against tourism, we’re against uncontrolled tourism. We’re receiving 18 million tourists a year, and there’s still no limit. Our islands are overwhelmed.”
Documentary filmmaker Felipe Ravina warned that illegal construction projects are still going ahead, while “limits on tourism and population growth” remain absent. “In the past 20 years, the population has grown by 600,000 people, and we simply don’t have the land or resources to support this indefinitely,” he said.