UK tourists forced to leave Tenerife after Canary Islands 'hits limit'

Thousands of Canary Islands took to the streets this weekend to campaign against overtourism. A demonstration in Tenerife on Saturday echoed others across the Canary Islands calling for sustainable tourism as the European Union holiday hotspot is overrun with anger.

2.2 million residents of the islands protested on Saturday in a long-running row over tourists. Thousands of Tenerife residents protested in the streets at the weekend, calling for a change in the tourism model, after similar anger in Barcelona.

It’s estimated that close to 10 million people visited the islands between January and September this year, many of them staying in short-term lets that have priced locals out of their homes. The regional government has just drafted a law that will bar newly built properties from being used for short-term lets and require landlords renting properties on short lets to gain a permit, and allow neighbours to object to them.

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UK tourists were forced to flee popular beach areas in the wake of the demonstrations. 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, amid growing anger.

In the Playa de las Americas in Tenerife, protesters appeared on the beach while tourists were sunbathing and chanted: “This beach is ours.” Between January and September, 9.9 million tourists visited the Canary Islands, according to the Spanish national statistics institute, 10.3 per cent more than in the same period in 2023.

“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. The locals believe the influx of tourists has become unsustainable in the Canary Islands.

Thousands of demonstrators paraded through the streets with UK holidaymakers warned.