Airports in a popular holiday hotspot loved by travelling Brits are suffering with high tourist numbers.
Lanzarote and Tenerife North airports in the Canary Islands are “struggling to cope” with the rising number of tourists and are coming close to their respective maximum capacities. Local reports front the Canarian Weekly said the César Manrique-Lanzarote Airport has a capacity of nine million passengers per year, but 8,213,259 passengers used it in 2023. This is around 90 percent of the airport’s maximum capacity.
Most passengers come from European countries including the UK and Germany alongside “significant domestic travel” from Gran Canaria, Tenerife North, and Madrid. Tenerife North Airport (Los Rodeos), meanwhile, is now at over 94 percent of its capacity – its total maximum capacity is 6.5 million passengers.
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Plans to expand the airports are in the “early stages”, Canary Weekly reported. The Canary Islands welcomed above 14 million passengers in 2023 and the news outlet said this put a “significant strain on the islands’ airports”. The Canary Islands was the scene of protests from some local campaigners on October 20. Demonstrators held banners and chanted slogans such as “the Canary Islands are not for sale” and “we are foreigners in our land”, while there were further protests in other loved holiday spots.
Demonstrations were seen in Barcelona, in the mainland Basque city of San Sebastian, the Canary and Balearic Islands and coastal cities like Alicante. There have also been some reports of real hostility to tourists, including local media reports of door locks in Sevilla being covered in excrement. Amid the high emotions, David Morales, the People’s Party’s (PP) tourism chief in the Canary Islands, said according to the BBC: “The right of tourists to enjoy their holidays without being the target of interruptions or gestural or verbal attacks, and certainly not physical attacks”.
Anti-tourism sentiments remain among man, and campaigners say tourism is driving up rents and harming living standards. Civil association Bizilagunekin, meaning “with the neighbours” in the Basque language”, said according to the broadcaster: “Tourism, which for a few is the golden goose, is an economic model which is choking the rest of us.” Bizilagunekin organised a recent demonstration in San Sebastian.
A new tax, meanwhile, will also come into place after locals complained about the huge numbers of tourists, which will be applied to rural areas and the protected site of Mount Teide. The Canary Islands’ City Council confirmed the levy will be in place for tourists from January 1 next year. Tenerife’s president Rosa Davila said in April: “We must analyse the exceptionalities that can be applied in a territory as fragile and limited as ours. What is clear is that Tenerife cannot be a theme park.
“Those who visit us have to value and respect our natural and cultural wealth, our resources, and they have to be clear about the rules for their preservation. In addition, there have to be limits to prevent tourism from overflowing.” Not everyone is convinced, however. Restaurant owner in the Canaries, August Ferreira, even organised a counter protest named ‘Lanzarote Loves Tourism’ in response to the protests that appeared across Spain. I have walked many streets visiting businesses and talking to people,” Ferreira said according to Birmingham Live. “I have heard very nice stories from people who say their family live off tourism, and that thanks to tourism they are what they are.”
“A man in Playa Blanca thanked me for what I am doing, he told me to keep going, that he supported me and that his whole family would be there. That is what gives me the energy and strength to continue with this idea, which is to send a clear message to the world that we do not want to provoke a confrontation with tourists who are certainly not to blame for the problems that have been generated on the Island in recent years.”
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