Anti-mass-tourism protests are to strike in Tenerife next month. Brits have been urged to remain vigilant as anger rises towards tourists locals believe to be guilty of raising the rate of rent.

The anti-mass-tourism protests that began last year have caught fire across Spain, with recent demonstrations being announced in Tenerife next month.

The protestors, who are fighting against mass holiday makers infiltrating their towns, have called on locals from the neighbouring Canary Islands to join them on the streets and make their voices heard. As of yet, organisers have not said whether they will demonstrate in the capital Santa Cruz like last April or take their fight to the south coast resorts packed with British and Irish holidaymakers.

So far, fifteen separate groups have pledged to take part under the umbrella protest platform ‘Canarias Tiene Un Limite’ – which translates into ‘The Canary Islands Have A Limit’. A spokesman claimed the eight islands that make up the Atlantic Ocean archipelago were “collapsing” under tourist pressure and the future for locals being priced out of somewhere to live by “foreign speculators” encouraged by regional government inaction looked bleaker than ever.

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The platform said in a statement: “Today our dependence on tourism is greater than ever, housing is more inaccessible than ever, the levels of poverty and social exclusion keep rising, we’re losing our unique natural heritage in the world at an alarming rate and macro-projects serving foreign speculation continue unabated. We’ve still lacking a true change of model that guarantees a decent future for the people who live in these islands.

“That’s why we’re announcing that, in the month of May, we will take to the streets of Tenerife again and we call on the other seven islands to join us again in this shared mission”.

The group’s call to action came three days after thousands of people marched in 40 cities across Spain including Malaga on the Costa del Sol and Alicante on the Costa Blanca to demand cheaper rents. The protestors highlighted the problems caused by excessive tourism, which they blame for pushing up prices for locals looking for longer-term rentals due to the number of Airbnb-style short-holiday lets.

Last year, Tenerife was at the forefront of protests linked to this type of mass tourism that accused regional governors of doing nothing to alleviate the problems critics have said the high rent rates cause. Ahead of multiple demonstrations on April 20, 2024, across the Canary Islands – which organisers reported 80,000 people had joined in Tenerife alone – six men and women went on hunger strike for 20 days outside a church in La Laguna near Santa Cruz to demand a halt to two macro hotel projects.

Subsequently, two anti-mass-tourism street protests were staged in the Majorcan capital Palma. Shocked tourists were booed and jeered by some locals as they ate evening meals on terraces in a central square. Marchers were also heard chanting “Tourists go home”.

A second huge protest in Palma, on July 21, passed off peacefully – although some demonstrators used Spain’s at the football Euros final to poke fun at English tourists and others branded British holidaymakers as “drunks”. Last October, demonstrators stormed a Tenerife beach and surrounded holidaymakers in their swimwear during an anti-mass-tourism demo. The surreal scenes occurred after hundreds of protestors, diverted from their planned seafront route in Playa de las Americas in the south of the island, ended up taking over Troya Beach.

One couple ended up trapped on their beach towels after protestors made a beeline for them on the sand, carrying a banner which appeared to say ‘Jediondos’ which is Spanish slang for ‘foul-smelling’. That same day, protests took place in six other Canary Islands, including Gran Canaria.

Street demos have not been the only type of actions organised. In places like Menorca, last July, around 250 protestors impeded the tourist access gate to the picture-postcard Cala Turqueta beach, found on the island’s southern coast, in a “surprise action”. Activists boasted of filling a car park by the beautiful cove with “residents’ cars”. They then used towels and their own bodies to shape the message ‘SOS Menorca’ on the sand by the waterline.

Graffiti in English was left on walls and benches in-and-around Palm Mar, Southern Tenerife at the start of last April. These included messages saying: “My misery, your paradise” and “Average salary in Canary Islands is 1,200 euros”. In an apparent UK backlash, a response left in English on a wall next to a “Tourists go home” message said: “F*** off, we pay your wages”.

Recently, anti-tourism groups have claimed an arson attack on hire cars in Southern Tenerife last month was the work of people left “exhausted” by the huge numbers of holidaymakers flocking to the island.