Mass tourism and the tawdry "luxury" of the large hotels are attracting gangsters, drug traffickers, time-share villains, and other undesirables

15:24 El NACHO 0 Comments

The spate of poor quality construction now seen in the Canary Islands is ruining the environment and turning many places into eyesores. This is the inevitable result of the islands' policy of opting for mass tourism.Although most of the income generated by tourism does not stay in the islands, the little that does is spent unwisely. The "get rich quick" mentality endengered by the tourist industry spurs feverish building by the islanders - houses, greenhouses, sheds for farming implements (usually a pretext for more ambitious building), and so on.Mass tourism needs infrastructure. Tourism is also to blame for the building of hundreds of roads, dual carriageways, streets, industrial estates, etc.This infrastructure scars the islands, turning whole areas into untidy jumbles of jerry-built housing, criss-crossed by roads that are jammed with traffic, reeking of exhaust fumes. This in turn helps ensure the islands only attract the most down-at-heel tourists - after all, who in his right mind would want to spend his holiday in such sordid surroundings?
As a result, the quality of the islands' tourist industry continues to slide, creating a vicious circle.Tourism consumes massive quantities of water. The problem is compounded by bad water management policies (including the building of thirsty golf courses and swimming pools). As a result, the islands' underground aquifers are now a wasting asset, with extraction far outstripping natural recharge rates.The number of locals finding low-grade jobs (waiters, cleaners, etc.) in the tourist industry is climbing steadily. The result is that many young people give up studying altogether, opting for easy-to-find, low-paid jobs instead. A whole generation of Canary Islanders is now ruthlessly exploited by foreign-owned businesses. This process is leading to a general "dumbing down" of the Canary Islands' population - something that further blinds the job-mesmerised locals to the evils of mass tourism.The general "dumbing down" of the population makes the locals lose respect for their historic and natural heritage, thus further damaging the image tourists get of the Canary Islands. This contributes to the general decline in the quality of the islands' tourist industry.Mass tourism and the tawdry "luxury" of the large hotels are attracting gangsters, drug traffickers, time-share villains, and other undesirables in droves. These shady characters have discovered how easy it is to cover their tracks amid the tourist hordes and that there are unrivalled opportunities for money laundering and related activities. The Spanish mainland's Costa del Sol has long been notorious as a haven for organised crime. The Canary Islands are now going the same way.