Waves of protests at popular Spanish holiday destinations like Barcelona and Tenerife are spreading across many of the sun-soaked country’s most well-visited spots. More than 8,000 citizens took to the streets on Sunday to protest skyrocketing rents and tell officials, “We don’t need more tourists.”
Unlike the anti-tourism protests of recent weeks and months, yesterday’s day of action saw people flood the major tourist hotspots across the popular Canary Islands, including some beaches where sunbathing Brits were forced to cower or flee as angry locals called for measures like an increased tourists tax, or even a “moratorium” on all tourism.
Brits on the Playa de las Américas and Troya beaches in Tenerife saw hundreds of protestors break the midday peace with a huge and rowdy procession, where people rallied behind the chant “The Canary Islands have a limit,” while declaring that “more tourists, more misery.” Tourists in other island destinations like Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, La Palma, and El Hierro, also saw locals take to the streets with similar demands.
READ MORE: Lanzarote calls for UK tourists to be charged as ‘island can’t take any more’
According to Spanish-language publication El Mundo, these anti-tourism protest groups, which now number more than 20, have gathered under the “Canary Islands have a limit” banner, with yet more waves of ever-more co-ordinated protests likely to follow. Reports in the Mail also suggest that signs reading “Go Home Tourist” were being waved at sunbathers.
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This new anti-tourist organisation released a statement justifying their actions, saying: “We will go to the tourist areas because that is where the injustice we are denouncing is taking place and because that is where we want to confront the system that is destroying our islands.”
This is despite Spain’s government introducing a series of measures to tackle the knock-on effects of the country’s huge popularity among holidaymakers, which has only grown since the pandemic.
Last week, after anti-tourism protests brought Madrid to a standstill, its government issued a Royal Decree to crackdown on the 14,000 illegal Airbnbs and other short-term holiday lets in the capital alone.
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
But this has done little to reduce the anger of residents living in Spain’s most popular tourist destinations, where locals are priced out of the areas where they live by tourists coming in and buying houses, including around 300,000 Brits who have moved there for the sun, sea, and sand. Just on the Canary Islands alone, one in three homes are now being purchased by foreigners.
The ‘Canary Islands have a limit’ group added: “While tourist areas prosper at the expense of our landscapes and resources, many local communities suffer the consequences: increased cost of living, loss of housing for residents, job insecurity and environmental deterioration.”
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