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Page 1″We don’t want a crappy hotel”
Page 2″We don’t want a crappy hotel”
A protest camp has been standing in La Laguna, in the north of Tenerife, for 14 days. Tents and pavilions are lined up close together. Activists hung colorful cardboard signs. “CANARY ISLANDS NOT FOR SALE, IT IS LOVED AND DEFENDED“, it says: The Canary Islands are not for sale, they are loved and defended. There is a red and white ribbon on it hunger strike zone off, the hunger strike zone. And in the middle of it all sits Altaha De Aguere, protesting for a better life.
De Aguere hasn’t eaten anything for 14 days and can no longer walk on his own. Fellow campaigners help De Aguere out of the tent and lift De Aguere into a wheelchair. Passersby and acquaintances come by, say hello and pat De Aguere’s shoulder. On the opposite side of the camp, tourists sit in the pedestrian zone in the café and eat. De Aguere looks over and says: “Ask the waiter what he earns.”
De Aguere, 25, grew up not far from La Laguna. Light eyes, dark curly hair, face pale, lips chapped. When tens of thousands of locals took to the streets in the Canary Islands last weekend against mass tourism, De Aguere was there for a few hours until De Aguere could no longer. De Aguere is demanding what many of the locals are demanding: that the construction of luxury resorts in the south of the island be stopped immediately. That housing becomes affordable again for locals. De Aguere wants more participation for the residents of Tenerife, the Tinerfeños, and less corruption on the island. That’s what De Aguere demonstrates for, that’s why she’s starving.
Tourists on one side, demonstrators on the other side of the pedestrian zone in Tenerife’s university town of La Laguna. © Rubén Plasencia for ZEIT ONLINE
It was only a few days ago that locals on all eight Canary Islands took to the streets at the same time. Environmental organizations had called for the protests. They are Canarios who no longer want to see their islands being built up. Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro. According to the organizers, there were a total of 80,000 people.
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The Canary weekly newspaper was then titled “Canary Islands at the limit”. The demonstrators complained that untouched coastal areas were being lost due to the tourist urbanization of the islands, that the islands could no longer withstand the burden, and that a tourist eco-tax was finally needed. “Tens of thousands are protesting against the Canary Islands’ unsustainable tourism model,” wrote the British Guardian and “Overtourism in the Canary Islands angers the population” the French newspaper The world.
And most of them protested here in Tenerife.
The demonstrations on Spain’s most populous island, with its endless cactus landscapes and kilometers of rocky beaches, with its dark volcanic sand, its mountains in the north and its mild climate in the south, were reported around the world. A place of longing to which Germans have been fleeing to relax since the 1960s.
Altaha De Aguere says the Tinerfeños have accepted being treated unfairly for far too long and are tired of not being able to make decisions about their own lives. “But that’s over now, we’ll fight.”
The activists wrote “No to destruction” and “Yes to nature conservation on all Canary Islands” on their posters. © Rubén Plasencia for ZEIT ONLINE
Rosa Dávila, the president of the island government, has now also intervened. Dávila says: “Tenerife is not a great theme park.” Tenerife is not an amusement park.
Last year more than 6.5 million tourists came to the island, Never that many before and more than on any other Canary Island. Only around 900,000 people live on Tenerife, in an area that is slightly smaller than Saarland.
Although Spain introduced a rent cap a year ago, rents in the Canary Islands have risen by 12 percent. The average salary here is just 1,800 euros, making it the second lowest income among the 17 Spanish autonomous communities. The housing shortage is blatant, and at the same time more than 30 percent of the houses in Tenerife are sold to foreigners. Last year, more than three million car trips were registered per day. There are traffic jams on the island and there are no train connections. Untreated wastewater is discharged into the sea and beaches are therefore closed. At the same time, Tenerife is repeatedly struggling with prolonged drought, the island has declared a water emergency, and supplies have already been restricted in some areas. All of these are problems that cause the locals to despair and demonstrate.
While Altaha De Aguere is starving in a tent in the north of the island, Jorge Marichal is sitting in a four-star hotel in the south. Marichal, gray checked suit, light blue shirt, black leather shoes, dark circles under his eyes, is the president of the Spanish Hotel and Restaurant Association (CEHAT). Marichal seems worried that the mood among the population could change and the island’s image could suffer serious damage. Recently there were reports about graffiti against tourists and a protest at the airport, about the sudden hostility to tourism.
Tourism has brought prosperity to Tenerife. There used to be nothing but agriculture here. Around 40 percent of the island’s residents now find work in tourism. Tourism accounts for more than 35 percent of gross domestic product. Although about half of the island legal is protected and may not be developed for tourist purposes.
His staff can no longer find affordable housing either, says Jorge Marichal, president of the Spanish Hotel and Restaurant Association. © Rubén Plasencia for ZEIT ONLINE
Quite a few people used to have to leave the island and move away in order to earn money, even to other Spanish-speaking countries such as Venezuela or Cuba, says Marichal. “Like my grandfather.”
But Marichal also says that he shares many of the demonstrators’ concerns. His staff can no longer afford apartments either. Many rooms on Tenerife are only rented out to tourists via online portals such as Airbnb because it is more lucrative than renting them out regularly. There are over 3,000 holiday apartments and houses on offer in the tourism hotspot of Adeje alone. At the same time, the number of residents has increased. The entire infrastructure had not been planned for years and was overloaded, and the rental of private holiday apartments was not sufficiently regulated. But the government is primarily responsible – and not the tourism industry. “Tourism is not the problem,” says Marichal. “He is the solution.”
A protest camp has been standing in La Laguna, in the north of Tenerife, for 14 days. Tents and pavilions are lined up close together. Activists hung colorful cardboard signs. “CANARY ISLANDS NOT FOR SALE, IT IS LOVED AND DEFENDED“, it says: The Canary Islands are not for sale, they are loved and defended. There is a red and white ribbon on it hunger strike zone off, the hunger strike zone. And in the middle of it all sits Altaha De Aguere, protesting for a better life.
De Aguere hasn’t eaten anything for 14 days and can no longer walk on his own. Fellow campaigners help De Aguere out of the tent and lift De Aguere into a wheelchair. Passersby and acquaintances come by, say hello and pat De Aguere’s shoulder. On the opposite side of the camp, tourists sit in the pedestrian zone in the café and eat. De Aguere looks over and says: “Ask the waiter what he earns.”