British holidaymakers have found themselves surrounded by angry crowds as anti-tourist protests sweep Spain’sCanary Islands.
More than 20 groups of residents across the Canary Islands launched simultaneous protests across Gran Canaria, Tenerife, La Palma, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and El Hierro on Sunday, as part of the “Canary Islands have a limit” campaign, Birmingham Live reports.
Protesters gathered at tourist hotspots across the islands with ‘Go Home Tourist!’ signs to demand a more sustainable model of tourism. They argue that mass tourism depletes limited natural resources like water, causes pollution, and pushes up the price of housing.
Sunbathers at Tenerife’s Playa de las Americas and Troya beaches were confronted by thousands of demonstrators who chanted “more tourists, more misery” and “this beach is ours”.
Protesters stormed the beach with placards brandishing slogans such as: “The Canary Islands are not for sale” and “Macrotourism destroys Canary Islands”. One woman’s poster declared: “Tourists, go f*****g home”, while another read: “The Canaries Don’t Live off Tourism. Tourism lives off the Canaries”.
Sara Lopez, 32, in Gran Canaria, explained: “We need a change in the tourist model so it leaves richness here, a change so it values what this land has because it is beautiful.”
The stand-off comes after a summer of huge demonstrations throughout popular Spanish resorts in response to mass tourism to the country. In the Canary Islands alone, around 9.9 million tourists are thought to have visited between January and September – more than four times the islands’ combined population of 2.2 million.
The startling scenes across the Canary Islands echo similar protests that have taken place elsewhere in Spain in recent months. In Barcelona earlier this year, thousands of locals doused tourists with water pistols and chanted “tourists go home” at a popular outdoor dining spot. Hazard tape was used to cordon off the public squares as protesters held cards reading “Enough! Let’s put limits on tourism”.
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