Thousands of people assembled in Arrecife today to join the demonstrations against mass tourism that took place on all eight Canary Islands, as well as in Madrid, London and Berlin.
Initial police estimates are that around 9,000 people participated in the Lanzarote demo, which stretched for over two kilometres. The Spanish Government delegation claimed the figure was around 10,000.
As the morning progressed, Arrecife filled up. Hundreds of shoppers and tourists from a cruise ship, mixed with protesters carrying hand-made placards and Canarian flags. The atmosphere around the bandstand was good-humoured and noisy, with drums, horns and whistles.
As well as locals, many of whom wore palm-woven traditional hats, many foreign residents of several nationalities also took part in the demonstration.
The march set off shortly after midday, accompanied by various chants such as “Menos cemento, más fundamento” (“Less cement, more reason”), “El Gobierno Canaria es un inmobiliaria” (“The Canarian Government is an estate agent”) and “Basta ya, ni una cama más” (“That’s enough, no more tourist beds”). There was absolutely no hostility shown towards tourists.
The march ended up at the Cabildo, where organisers read out their manifesto, calling for a change in the model of tourism on the Canaries. Calls were also made for a moratorium on tourist numbers and a tourist tax.
POSITIVE COVERAGE OF DEMONSTRATION
The BBC, Sky, Reuters, the Guardian, the Independent, Euronews and several other organisations all reported on the protests, and coverage was generally fair, stressing that the marches were not against tourists or tourism, but the effects of the island’s current model of mass tourism.
Even the Mail Online produced a balanced report, although it did not miss the opportunity to reprint photos of the rare examples of anti-tourist graffiti that popped up in Tenerife a few months ago.
The Daily Telegraph published a strongly supportive opinion piece by senior travel writer, Greg Dickinson which described the protests as “entirely sensible”.
Dickinson wrote that tourists can also “be part of the solution rather than the problem.”
“What this looks like, in practice,” he wrote “is staying with locally owned hotels. It is eating in independent, family run restaurants and cafes. It is tipping the waiter. It is travelling in the shoulder season, where possible. It is limiting our water usage while on holiday. It is using one towel. It is behaving in a way that we would behave in our home town (and, hell, maybe even calling out those who aren’t doing so).”
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