Canary Islands refuses to follow in his footsteps Balearic Islands and throw a new one tourist moratorium. Other Spanish archipelagos have recently become a Law banning the creation of new tourist destinations for the next four years Committed to reducing the hotel capacity, Adalar does not consider it necessary to take measures in this regard as in the past. This was determined yesterday by Tourism, Industry and Trade Minister Yaiza Castilla, who assured that beyond freezing the number of beds, “much deeper reflection” is needed to improve the sustainability of a sector vital to the island economy.
The purpose of laws, known as tourist moratoriums, is to control the growth of tourist activity in a particular area.. This is not a new tool in the Canary Islands, where three different moratoriums have been approved in the last two decades. The last one was in 2013 with the Tourism Renewal Act, among other points, vetoed the construction of any non-five-star hotel. Drinking from the arrangement that the Balearic Islands had approved a year ago, it only allowed the new construction of four or five star hotels, not the creation of new places, so it was necessary for a project to continue. another organization cancels its subscription so that it can transfer it to itself. Now, 22 years later, the Balearic Parliament has passed a new four-year moratorium, which also encourages bed reduction.
But on this occasion, it seems that the Canary Islands will not imitate the Balearic Islands again. Castilla stressed that the situation in both regions is “not comparable”. While millions of tourists come here mostly only four months of the year, they are scattered throughout the year in the Islands. That means around 300,000 visitors live with the local population every day.
However, these 300,000 daily tourists are unevenly distributed within the Canary Islands, and the impact they cause may be different in each of the islands. Mwhile Tenerife o Gran Canaria’s percentage of visitors to the local population is not as high as on the other islands of the archipelago. Lanzarote anyone fuerteventura ratio between residents and visitors reaches 33%. Castilla explained that before Cadena Ser’s mics, a tourist’s footprint “could be larger in an area with little impact or more settlements than already crushed.”
The consultant also appeared in the regional Parliament yesterday to discuss the Archipelago’s tourist load capacity, at the request of the Canarian Nationalist Group. in it, He pointed out that the tourism land in the Canary Islands covers 4% of the total area. It also explained that “46 percent is rural, non-urbanized and 40 percent is protected.” Percentages that he considers “targets”, which indicate the extent to which the industry is impacting the region.
Castilla explained that the tourist load should not be confused with the capacity of the destination. “The load depends on the conditions under which these visits take place, not on how many tourists fit in a place,” he insisted, and is based on cultural, urban or infrastructure parameters, “not a magic number.” Also, since each island has its own characteristics, it cannot be confronted in general.
For this reason, Reminded that tourism management guidelines in the Canary Islands fall into island management plans and therefore it is the councils themselves that must determine the development of tourism activity in each municipality depending on how the load changes.
However, he stressed that this does not mean that nothing has been done to improve the sustainability of this activity. “There must be something cross,” he said. many initiatives associated with New Generation funds announced that it would proceed in this direction and that the Canary Islands would abide by the Glasgow declaration, It will commit to reducing its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.
“We need to be sustainable to support ourselves financially,” stressed Castilla, because In this sense, remediation is not only vital to maintaining the natural conditions that attract tourists in the Archipelago, but also an element that visitors increasingly value in the destinations they visit. “In this sense, we are the pioneers,” he said, adding value to the commitment to sustainable tourism.
Nationalist lawmaker David de la Hoz questioned whether the Canary Islands could be a pioneer without a tourism sustainability strategy supported by certain indicators of tourism carrying capacity. ““We shouldn’t be afraid to address these debates that already exist in other regions, such as the Balearic Islands or Hawaii, where the number of new places will freeze in the coming years.”