canary islands tourism coastal thinning plan

Canary Islands tourism chief backs ‘coastal thinning’ model

Tourism minister calls for ‘de-densification’ study

The Canary Islands’ Tourism Minister, Jéssica de León, threw down the gauntlet this Thursday by calling for a study of the ‘de-densification’ (coastal thinning) theory being applied in the Balearic Islands. This involves freeing up coastal space by demolishing outdated infrastructure while increasing the height and quality of remaining buildings. She warned that for politicians, “there is nothing more tempting than campaigning on land-use issues.”

Political challenges in land-use planning

“Planning is not easy and involves making decisions, and very few politicians dare to say no to people who have legitimate hopes and interests in that land,” the Tourism Minister said during a parliamentary committee hearing. She highlighted that these factors make political consensus on the issue extremely difficult. De León was responding to nationalist MP Mario Cabrera, who asked whether she planned to develop new mechanisms to align tourist numbers and flow with the islands’ territorial and housing capacity.

Risk of ‘dying of success’

Cabrera argued that the carrying capacity criterion must be taken into account to avoid “dying of success” amid the social, environmental and economic degradation that unlimited tourism growth could cause. However, he also warned that the debate cannot be based solely on an urban planning perspective “because we will make the same mistakes again.” Citing the example of Menorca, he noted that part of the island had been saved but “growth overwhelmed it, broke it, ate away all its balances” – something he believes could happen in the Canary Islands with holiday rentals.

Island-by-island approach

The minister clarified that the concept of carrying capacity was already introduced in the 2003 general guidelines law and in the subsequent land law, hence the need to update the island planning frameworks. She stressed that each island must define its own model because “El Hierro and Fuerteventura do not share the same reality.” On this point, she emphasised that the island councils (cabildos) are administratively mature enough to determine their own carrying capacity and growth rate.

De León advocated releasing residential land in line with each island’s growing economic needs. Regarding tourism use, she called on the Parliament to examine what other autonomous communities are doing, citing the Balearic de-densification model as an example: freeing up hotel and self-catering plots on the seafront by increasing density in height or category. “In this way, we could reduce our footprint and gain in quality while recovering the coastline by freeing up the first line of the sea,” she concluded.

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