Behind the postcard-perfect scenes in the Canary Islands, pressure is mounting. In the first half of 2025 alone, the archipelago welcomed 7.8 million visitors and processed more than 27 million airport passengers, a 5% increase over the previous year. It’s a record that has locals questioning how much more their islands can take.
Thousands marched through the streets of Tenerife, Gran Canaria, and Lanzarote in May under the banner, “Canarias tiene un límite” (“The Canaries have a limit”). Their message was clear: booming tourism, soaring housing costs, and mounting environmental strain are threatening the foundations of island life.
Tourism contributes more than a third of the Canary Islands’ GDP and employs roughly 40% of its population. Yet success has come at a price.
“Residents have started protesting because they’re genuinely fed up,” says John Dale Beckley, founder of the sustainability platform CanaryGreen.org. “Traffic is one of the biggest issues. What used to be a 40-minute drive from the north can now take well over an hour each way.”
Housing, too, has become a flashpoint.
“The government previously changed regulations that allowed residents to rent out their properties on Airbnb and Booking.com,” Beckley explains. “This has driven up both rental prices and property values. Many young people now find it almost impossible to rent or buy a home.”
That reality is echoed by ATAN (Asociación Tinerfeña de Amigos de la Naturaleza), one of Tenerife’s oldest environmental groups. “Access to housing has become virtually impossible due to the invasion of vacation rentals,” a spokesperson tells Fodor’s.
“Natural spaces are constantly degraded, with alarming losses in biodiversity. Overcrowding has erased peaceful places where we could once enjoy life there are no truly local spaces left.”
Water scarcity and infrastructure strain are the next looming crises.
“Tenerife has been under an official water emergency, but honestly, on the ground, we’re not feeling a ‘water emergency’ at all,” Beckley says. “People are still showering, watering gardens, filling swimming pools, everything as normal.”
Yet academics and experts warn that the combination of rising visitor numbers and a warming climate is unsustainable. Desalination plants and eco-certified hotels have eased some of the burden, but progress remains uneven. “Buses are overcrowded, traffic jams are constant, and beaches close more often due to pollution and sewage runoff,” Beckley adds. Imagine wading into what should be crystalline hotel-resort waters, only to realise that 100 million liters of untreated or barely treated sewage gush into the sea every day, swamping beaches with fecal contamination.
ATAN paints an even starker picture: “The continuous arrival of new residents–mainly Europeans–worsens overpopulation, environmental degradation, and land occupation, given the islands’ very limited space. Essential resources like water are also being pushed to their limits.”
In early 2025, the regional government introduced a law barring newly built properties from being used as short-term rentals, requiring landlords to obtain permits, and allowing neighbors to veto tourist flats in their buildings. National reforms soon followed, giving communities the final say on whether apartments can be used for tourism. But on the ground, few believe this will solve the problem.
“So far, there hasn’t been much visible change,” Beckley notes. “Enforcement has been slow–maybe by 2026 we’ll start to see more concrete results.”
ATAN is more direct: “All regulatory changes have either deepened this predatory model or been mere window dressing. The proposed law on vacation rentals could even double or quadruple the current number of accommodations. Meanwhile, large urban projects and new hotels continue to be approved–nothing is moving in the right direction.”
For many Canarians, tourism is both a lifeline and a burden. The islands rely heavily on visitor spending, yet locals often see little of it. Beckley, who’s been based on the islands for 25 years, says. “Tourism brought money and opportunity, but it also concentrated wealth. Today, most hotels are owned by large investment groups, often managed by foreigners. So much of the profit leaves the islands.”
Despite better infrastructure and higher living standards, he adds, “There’s a growing awareness that the real financial benefits of tourism aren’t reaching locals.” Grassroots projects like Canary Green are trying to build alternatives.
ATAN says the issue goes beyond economics.
“We are losing our identity, culture, and, ultimately, our right to exist as a community,” the group says. “Tourism has become unlimited, mass-oriented, and largely low-cost party tourism that doesn’t come to truly discover the islands, but to consume a fake backdrop.”
