Las Palmas De Gran Canaria (EFE).- The candidate for the Presidency of the Canary Islands Government for United Sí Podemos (Podemos Canarias, Izquierda Unida and Sí Se Puede), Noemí Santana, is confident that this confluence will emerge reinforced from the polls on 28M to that can demand the implementation on the islands of an average eco-tax of 4 euros to its potential progressive government partners.
This was stated to journalists this Saturday by the Canarian Minister of Social Rights before participating in a demonstration called for Earth Day by the environmental organization Ben Magec with the slogan “Canary Islands have a limit”, in which their representatives They have advocated “consuming less to live more”, in relation to the impact generated by mass tourism on the islands.
Santana has been very much in agreement with Saramago, who said, as he recalled, “that quality tourism is one that visits places that respect themselves.”
The representative of Podemos in the pact that supports the Canarian Government, which is led by the PSOE and of which the NC and ASG are also part, considers that this archipelago has to reverse “the ecological footprint left by the millions of visitors it has”, for which that advocates implementing an eco-tax that generates income to invest in improving the sustainability of this land.
“We believe that it is a bet that is already applied in many destinations in Europe and the world and that it has been seen that it does not have a negative impact on the arrival of tourists and it does make the destination have income to reverse all these consequences of a mass tourism,” he said.
Regarding the opposition shown by various economic and political sectors to applying this green tax to tourism, the engine of the productive fabric of the Canary Islands, the candidate of United Sí Podemos has stressed that “it is assumed that there is mostly a political will of the forces represented in the Parliament that there is an eco-tax”, although he regretted that “for some it is never the time” to start it up.
“We do not understand when it will be, for Unidas Sí Podemos it is now, we are having record numbers of visitors, above those before the pandemic, and we are losing income. We have calculated that only in the four holidays of Holy Week, the Canary Islands have lost 4 million euros because they no longer have this measure in operation.
Santana has stressed that the Canary Islands cannot depend on the monoculture of tourism, but that it has to diversify its economy and also bet on a tourism model “of greater care and respect for its natural and human resources.”
“We do not believe that tourism should be ruled out as a sector of our economy, but we do believe in a new model, on which a lot of pedagogy must be done and people must be explained the consequences of receiving this massive tourism,” he said.
Noemí Santana believes, in any case, “that we are in luck because the younger population is already well aware that we have neither planet nor ‘b’ archipelago for our future”, for which she celebrates that, “little by little, each More and more people are joining in wanting to take care of this land for the future because, without a doubt, if we don’t act now, the future of the Canary Islands could be discouraging”.
In addition to the eco-tax, United Sí Podemos Canarias proposes “regulating vacation rentals to set a limit and implement an island exception that allows residents to have priority access to the housing market, since on the islands one in three homes is they buy people who live abroad.”
“We have measures and solutions. We must put an end to this model of unsustainable speculation”, stated Santana, who stressed that Podemos established in the so-called Pact of Flowers that governs the Canary Islands that, “at least, the feasibility of implementing an ecotax should be studied”. in the archipelago, “because the other forces of the pact did not let him put it into operation.”
Nor has a study been started “on what that action would be because there was no will on the part of the Ministry of Tourism”, in the hands of ASG, given the possible reissue of that government pact after 28M, the United Sí Podemos confluence advises that it will be “much more demanding to implement instruments such as the eco-tax.”
“The important thing is to see the strength that the 28M gives us at the polls, we believe that having a strong Podemos and a strong confluence within that pact we are going to have more progressive and left-wing policies. It is clear that the one who has pulled the State Government and the Canary Islands to make progressive policies has been Podemos and if there is no United Yes We Can in that pact I do not know what can happen because the only guarantee that the right does not govern in this archipelago” is this union of parties, he added.
“The rest are open to negotiating with the right, they have already said it,” he warned. EFE