A FEDERATION of eight Spanish tourist resorts are complaining that they don’t get enough help from the government to pay for basic services.
The Alliance of Sun and Beach Tourist Municipalities has Adeje, Arona, Benidorm, Calvia, Lloret de Mar, Salou, San Bartolome de Tirajana and Torremolinos as its members.
The resorts account for 9% of Spain’s annual foreign tourist numbers which puts a strain on cleaning, waste collection, transport, and police services.
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Alliance president and mayor of Arona in Tenerife, Fatima Lesmes, said: “We spend €14 million annually on cleaning and waste collection alone and 40% is down to the tourist population.”
“Arona’s population doubles or triples throughout the year and foreign tourists now come all year around,” Lesmes told the El Pais newspaper.
Only Salou gets public aid out of the Alliance members as it fits within the definition of tourist municipality that’s included within the Law of Local Finances.
This allows some areas to cope massive population hikes during the summer.
The criteria to get help is that a municipality is not a provincial capital, that it has between 20,000 and 75,000 people registered on the padron, and that the number of second homes exceeds the number of main properties.
Fatima Lesmes said: “We are not asking for privileges, but for equity,”
“We need a new financing system that acknowledges the millions of tourists we welcome and serve.”
Lesmes said the tourism boom in Arona had generated discomfort among residents due to the lack of housing and lower spending on policing and cleaning in some areas as opposed to those parts that are ‘colonised’ by foreign tourism.
Eugenio Reyes, secretary general of the Canaary Islands Ben Magec Ecologist Federation told El Pais that there are a lot of double-standards over mass tourism.
“Municipalities complain that there are too many tourists, but then they speculate with the land and charge millionaire commissions- in effect becoming real estate companies to approve urban plans.”
Reyes has suggested the tourist tax- currently levied in the Canaries and Catalunya- should be used to counter the environmental impact of tourism, as opposed to being spent on promoting even more visitors.
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