Excerpt and Photo from euronews.com
Around 30,000 people took to the streets of the different cities and towns of the archipelago on Sunday under the banner “The Canary Islands have a limit.”
In 2023 over 16 million tourists visited and it’s likely that number will be higher when 2024 is over. Tourists spent more than 20 billion euros in 2023, but it comes at a price.
And whilst the protesters concede that tourism provides crucial jobs, they say most of them are low-skilled and badly paid.
As many properties are owned by second home-owners who don’t live there all the time, buying a property to live in has become prohibitively expensive – and renting an affordable apartment has long been a struggle.
Tourism grew by five percent last year and the protesters say it’s too much, as the islands have become overcrowded. Many suggest the answer lies in attracting fewer, wealthier tourists as other countries have successfully done.