TENS of thousands of demonstrators have hit the streets of Spain’s Canary Islands to demand changes to the model of mass tourism they say is overwhelming the Atlantic archipelago.
An estimated 57,000 people joined the protests, which began at midday (11:00 GMT) on Saturday, Spanish media reports said, citing the central government’s representative in the islands.
Flag-waving crowds packed the streets of the main towns across all of the archipelago’s seven islands, chanting and whistling, and holding placards with slogans like: “The Canary Islands are not up for sale!”; “A moratorium on tourism”; and “Respect my home”.
“It’s not a message against the tourist, but against a tourism model that doesn’t benefit this land and needs to be changed,” one of the protesters told the Reuters news agency during the march in Tenerife’s capital, Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Smaller marches were held elsewhere in the island group and other Spanish cities, all of them organised by about two dozen environmental organisations ahead of the peak summer holiday season.
The protests were called by some 20 social and environmental groups who say tourist overcrowding perpetuates an economic model that harms local residents and damages the environment.
They want the authorities to limit the number of visitors and have proposed introducing an eco-tax to protect the environment, a moratorium on tourism and a clampdown on the sale of properties to non-residents.
“The authorities must immediately stop this corrupt and destructive model that depletes the resources and makes the economy more precarious. The Canary Islands have limits and people’s patience [does], too,” Antonio Bullon, one of the protest leaders, told Reuters.
