Thousands of people demonstrated on Sunday in the Canary Islands in Spain against mass tourism, asking the authorities to limit the number of visitors in order to protect local residents from rising housing costs, traffic congestion and overloading of services.
Under the slogan “The Canary Islands have limits”, protesters took to the streets of all the main islands of the archipelago and several cities in mainland Spain. Some chanted slogans about the impact of tourism on water supplies.
“Tourism is very important for the Canary Islands, but we have to realize that the collapse is total,” Juan Francisco Galindo, a hotel manager in Tenerife, told Reuters. His father owns a small property on the island, for which the local administration issued an expropriation order in 2023 due to the approval of a project to build a luxury hotel complex. “The 70 square meters they want to expropriate is all my father owns. His health has deteriorated since this happened,” he said.
More than 1 million foreign tourists visit the islands every month, compared to the local population of 2.2 million, according to official figures.
Spain, which had record tourist arrivals in 2024, is expecting even more visitors this year. Galindo said the number of hotel beds has tripled since the 1970s, when the islands’ infrastructure was built, resulting in soaring housing prices, traffic congestion and limited access to health services during the peak tourist season.
Spain has witnessed several protests against over-tourism in other popular holiday destinations such as Mallorca, Barcelona and Malaga. Similar demonstrations took place last year.
Sirlene Alonso, a lawyer living in Gran Canaria, criticised the regional government’s plans to build more housing instead of limiting the number of tourists. “The goal is not the quality of tourism, but to have more and more tourists come. The number of tourists and people coming to live here is crushing us,” he said.
