Thousands of flag-waving protesters took to the streets of the Canary Islands, chanting and whistling to demand restrictions on mass tourism.
“The Canary Islands are not for sale,” they shouted as tourists sat and watched in deck chairs under parasol covers.
“It’s colonialism”
The protests were organized as a follow-up to the one held in April – against mass tourism that critics say favors investors at the expense of the environment and forces local residents into low-paying service jobs.
The protesters held up placards with texts such as “it’s not tourism, it’s colonialism” and “enough is enough” and demanded restrictions on the number of tourists, a crackdown on holiday apartments and a stop to what they described as uncontrolled development.
Around 10,000 people took part in the protests across the archipelago, with the largest demonstration drawing around 6,500 people in Tenerife, a local official said.
One in three is poor
About four in ten residents work in tourism, which accounts for 36 percent of the islands’ gross domestic product, official figures show. At the same time, one in three people living in the Canary Islands is at risk of poverty and 65 percent are struggling to make ends meet, according to the latest figures from the European Anti-Poverty Network.
– The tourism sector brings poverty, unemployment and misery to the Canary Islands, Eugenio Reyes Naranjo, spokesman for the environmental group Ben Magec-Ecologists in Action, told AFP at the demonstration in Gran Canaria.