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Bemused tourists trying to get the last of the sun on Spain’s famous beaches found themselves in the middle of angry protests over the weekend .
Thousands of locals protested in holiday resorts in Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday against over tourism which they say prices local people out of the housing market.
Under the slogan Canary Islands has a limit, residents demonstrated simultaneously in Gran Canaria, Tenerife, La Palma, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and El Hierro and called for a change in the tourism model for the islands.
In the Playa de las Americas in Tenerife, protesters appeared on the beach while tourists were sunbathing and chanted “This beach is ours.”
Activists claim the arrival of millions of visitors every year depletes limited natural resources like water and damages the environment. At least 8,000 people took part, the Spanish government said.
Between January and September, 9.9 million tourists visited the Canary Islands, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute, 10.3% more than in the same period in 2023. The islands’ population was 2.2 million last year.
“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,” Sara Lopez, 32, told Reuters in Gran Canaria on Sunday.
Tourism-dependent Spain has seen a series of protests against over tourism this year in Barcelona, and other popular holiday destinations like Mallorca and Malaga.
In similar scenes earlier this year thousands of Barcelona residents squirted diners in tourist areas with water during a protest against mass tourism.
The Spanish locals chanted “tourists go home” with placards that read “Enough! Let’s put limits on tourism” in the demonstration against overtourism.
Video footage in July shows holidaymakers dining outside popular squares in the city being doused with water pistols and cordoned off using hazard tape by a crowd of almost 3,000.
The Canary Islands regional government drafted a law which is expected to pass this year to toughen the rules on short lets following complaints from locals priced out of the housing market.
Newly built properties will be barred from the short-let market and property owners with a permit will have five years to comply with requirements that include granting neighbours the right to object to these permits.
The Canary Islands decided to crack down on tourist rents after the number of private renters exploded in recent years.
On Saturday, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Valencia to call for more affordable housing, saying tourist flats push up prices.
