The federation of environmental groups of the Canary Islands Ben Magec considers “a resounding success” the attendance at the demonstrations for another tourism model on April 20, which it maintains mobilized nearly 150,000 people, in “a historic milestone” that, according to this Sunday, a day later, should lead the authorities to “take forceful measures.”
Having new regulations “that establish limits and regulate tourist activity and, in turn, put the benefits it generates at the service of the social majorities” must be the goal of the islands’ rulers, from whom citizens “demand a new development model” as the protests have demonstrated, the organization says in a statement.
Which, then, states: “The time has come for decided bets on the decrease in tourism and to restructure our economy, from social and environmental justice, putting life at the center, guaranteeing the well-being of future generations in a context of alarming climate emergency”.
And he insists that these demands must be met after the demonstrations made clear – he argues – “the overwhelming rejection of Canarian society to the current development model in the Canary Islands, based on mass tourism in a fragile and limited territory”, and before which the people who reside in the archipelago “demand urgent measures to reverse it,” he adds.
Ben Magec states that “the environmental movement, since the time of César Manrique, has been denouncing the plundering of our natural spaces to put them at the service of this industry”, and that “the exponential and unmeasured growth in the arrival of tourists to these islands “is straining coexistence inside and outside tourist centers.”
So that “the growing touristification of our territory is already encompassing urban and rural areas and the global gentrification that this activity generates is making access to housing impossible for a large number of people with precarious salaries and lives,” he says.
As well as that “the growing and massive arrival of tourists is taking over all our natural resources, infrastructure and services to the point of exhaustion.”
In conclusion, the federation emphasizes: “This is why we demand that public institutions urgently take the necessary measures to alleviate the gentrification that their neoliberal policies have favored,” and that, at the same time, the political class “commits to detouristification and also implement a finalist ecotax aimed at mitigating the environmental impacts that this activity produces.
“But above all,” he clarifies, “that it recovers the tourism moratorium and that, in the situation of climate emergency and collapse of our natural habitats, it does not allow the consumption of even one more centimeter of land to put it at the service of the tourism industry and others.” speculative purposes.”
And he summarizes: “We demand that the political class stop bowing to the interests of the big businessmen in the tourism industry.”