In almost all artistic disciplines, complexity, whether natural or gratuitous, is a sign of maturity and, at the same time, the early prelude to inevitable decline, although the latter takes centuries to manifest. It is enough to study the transition between the Renaissance – a historical era in which artists longed to emulate the classicism of the ancients – and the Baroque – an art based on the vital disappointment caused by the certainty of the end – to realize that any excess It can be read interchangeably as a sign of wealth and, at the same time, as a preamble to a time full of calamities.
Something similar can be said about the success of tourism in Andalusia, whose leaders look with concern at the demonstrations that filled the streets of the Canary Islands a week ago, where 60,000 people protested the effects of mass tourism. Shouting ‘The Canary Islands have a limit’, a motto that can perfectly be exported – without falling into demagoguery – to the great autonomy of the South, the islanders protested the impact, not exactly favorable, that the tourism industry is having on the market. real estate, in the commercial fabric and in the conservation of its heritage, whether cultural or environmental.
The Canary Islands protests are not a cramp. They embody a growing citizen awareness that large-scale tourism – regardless of the travelers’ income –, in addition to (economic) lights, casts (social) shadows. These are two elements that, without a doubt, recommend an in-depth political debate. The problem is that in Andalusia the right does not want to address it.
His refusal responds to logic, but it is partisan and does not match the general interest. Dealing with social discontent, furthermore, terrifies Moreno Bonilla, whose political success in these five years has been to reign in the Quirinale without having to manage anything. Quite a paradox.
The tourism industry, converted into a more global market than ever thanks to the digital economy, generates billions of income whose redistribution is not the subject of any social contract. Without tourism, any territory, and especially Andalusia, would lose one of its important economic levers; but its unlimited growth rapidly dualizes society, skyrocketing the prices of basic goods, such as food, housing and leisure, in addition to swallowing up a considerable part of public services, which are paid for with the neighbors’ money and, only in part, with collection via taxes and tributes.
The PP, like the PSOE in its day, resists putting limits on tourist activity, but this closure is not going to eliminate the social unrest, which exists. It will undoubtedly contribute to increasing it, the same thing that has been happening, for five years now, in the delicate field of health management and waiting lists. The Andalusian tourism model, like what happens in other areas of Spain, is not designed based on criteria of cohesion and social balance.
On the contrary. There is no other productive sector that receives greater doses of indirect public investment – ??via advertising, promotion, image campaigns, organization of events and cultural or marketing activities – than tourism, to which rulers incapable of promoting a balanced economy resort to quickly obtain statistics that allow them to simulate that, thanks to their government, general prosperity increases.
Economic bubbles – and the tourism bubble is one, just as in 2008 the brick crisis would cause the biggest financial debacle in recent history – are very difficult phenomena to manage. No politician wants to stop them when the party is at its highest phase. When they burst, no one wants to take responsibility for the damage either.
Of the 85 million tourists who visited Spain in 2023 – more than the United States, China and Italy –, almost double the legal population, 34 million passed through Andalusia, which has 8.5 million inhabitants. These figures, which the Board celebrates with superlative enthusiasm, double the number of visitors that the Canary Islands receive, even though they are spread over a larger territory.
The tourist density is lower, but its concentration on the coast and in the historic centers of the large cities – Seville, Malaga, Granada, even Cádiz – is relevant. 35% of GDP and 40% of employment in the Canary Islands comes from tourism. In Andalusia, the contribution of the sector to the regional economy is lower – 13% – and it is estimated that the jobs linked to this activity benefit 400,000 Andalusians.
These are figures that should be subjected to an antivirus. Official statistics on this matter tend to be majestic and underestimate nuances. And the devil lives in the details: garbage or low-skilled employment, low salaries, the barely reliable fiscal balance and the scam that the underground economy represents are also part of the x-ray.
The Board prefers to ignore all these issues: the hotel and hospitality concentration expels low and medium income population from the cities, increases the price per square meter, replaces traditional commerce and local stores with consumer businesses, transforms the urban landscape and It has an indisputable environmental impact.
Tourism does not eliminate pockets of historical poverty either – ten of the fifteen most depressed neighborhoods in Spain are still in Andalusia despite its record of visitors – and it saturates infrastructure and public services. A diagnosis is pending that establishes a rigorous correspondence between the advantages and disadvantages of the activity. It is not a simple task. The operators benefiting from the tourism bubble act as a lobby against a citizenry whose discomfort until now was not organized.
The Board does not even want to talk about the situation. It spends unprecedented amounts on promotion – the Andalusian Crush campaign alone cost the regional public coffers 38 million euros – and wants to multiply the number of tourists to improve Andalusia’s position in a competition that ignores social breakdown, just as has already happened with the real estate crisis.
In parallel, San Telmo refuses, against the criteria of its own city councils, to implement a tourist tax, similar to the one charged in Barcelona, ??considering it “a tax on tourism.” “In Andalusia there is no touristification nor is there saturation,” insists the presidency of the Board.
Social and economic dualization, however, is a fact: the benefits of this ‘industry’ enrich only a specific part of society – companies and real estate owners, hotel chains, investment funds, owners of tourist apartments, bars and restaurants – , but they ignore another, which does assume a notable part of its costs.
The situation can be compared to the paradox that existed in ancient Rome when the immense triumphal arches were built to celebrate their epic military victories. During the early centuries, these memorial gates were relatively simple. As the imperium expanded, they were filled with sculptures with heroes, friezes and ornaments.
With the decay, the leaf litter barely allowed the structure of the buildings to be seen. As the barbarians approached the capital of the empire, the more enormous these victorious Roman monuments became. Those that resisted the collapse of Rome remained for centuries converted into beautiful and romantic ruined monuments in the middle of a wasteland.
