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Canary Islands deny UK media claim the islands are on the verge of collapse
The Spanish islands have bitten back at the Daily Mirror’s claim that they are being overwhelmed with tourists
British tabloid the Daily Mirror has had its wrists firmly slapped by the government of the Canary Islands, which has very publicly refuted claims by the newspaper that the archipelago is facing “ecological collapse” due to tourist overexploitation.
The Mirror ran with the story last weekend that the islands broke a record for visitors in 2023, welcoming 48 million holidaymakers, half of whom were British. In fairness to the tabloid, it was only echoing sentiments recently published by environmental group Ben Magec-Ecologistas en Acción, which warned that "the Canary Islands territory is more than overexploited".
"We have exceeded the carrying capacity of the territory seven times, resulting in a scenario of systemic collapse due to the urban structure," the report added.
According to the report of this organisation, there has been an "uncontrolled increase in the non-resident population of European origin, giving rise to completely overpopulated islands in which the generation of waste and the exploitation of resources cause an almost irreversible degradation of our natural ecosystems."
The trouble with the figures quoted, at least according to the government of the Canary Islands, is that they have been taken out of context. This favourite destination for Brits did indeed record 48.4 million passengers transiting through its airports during 2023, but this included return journeys, as well as inter-island air traffic.
Turismo de Canarias highlighted the mistake made by the Daily Mirror, stating that "in no case" should the number of tourists be confused with the overall number of passengers moving through the airports.
To clear things up, the Canary Islands team revealed that between January and November last year, the archipelago welcomed 14.6 million bonafide holidaymakers, a figure which will probably increase to around 16.2 million when the data for December is added (it hasn’t yet been released).
That’s still a lot of tourists, but it falls well within the average and certainly isn’t anymore than the infrastructure can cope with, according to Turismo. In fact, between 2017 and 2020, the range of visitors that the Canary Islands received was set between 16 million and 15.1 million, never a lower amount.
If anything, the islands are under less pressure than many other hotspots that are inundated during the summer months, since tourist numbers to the Canaries tend to remain steady throughout the year.
Image: Turismo de Tenerife
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