An estimated 30,000 people have taken part in midday protests across five of the Canary Islands against mass tourism which they say is overwhelming the archipelago.
The move is part of a wider protest movement across the islands, calling itself Canarias Se Agota, or The Canaries Have Had Enough.
Protesters want limits on tourist numbers and curbs on uncontrolled development harmful for the environment and residents.
The demonstrators stress they are not against the tourism industry, which is a major part of the Canaries’ economy.
Activists began a hunger strike in recent weeks to demand a halt to construction of La Tejita hotel and the Cuna del Alma resort in Tenerife, which have been the targets of campaigners’ anger, have been beset by legal issues. as well as a moratorium on all tourism development projects.
Spain’s Congress gave the go ahead to the construction of the Cuna del Alma project despite protests outside the parliament building. The Podemos party stated that the 400-villa resort was being built “on one of the last virgin zones” of the Tenerife coast.
A total of 13.9m tourists visited the Canary Islands in 2023 including 585,456 from Ireland. The overall figure was up 13pc on 2022 and six times the islands’ population of 2.2m. Tourism for the first two months of 2024 was up 11.8pc on 2023.
In 2023, 34pc of Canary Islanders were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, the second-highest figure in Spain after Andalusia, according to the National Statistics Institute
