Canary Islands has a serious problem in housing, both renting and buying, that also does not seem easy to solve. In economic matters, this has been one of the issues most discussed by the media throughout 2023, with headlines such as the one on April 24 about Mogan, “which surpasses Ibiza and Marbella in the price per square meter of land for rent.” Two months later, it was announced that The price of rent grows 14 times more in the Islands than salaries in the last decade or that Santa Cruz de Tenerife It is the city in Spain with the most empty houses. The whopping number of headlines continued in September with information such as that “only one in every 100 homes in the Canary Islands is public” although as a positive counterpart it should be noted, in that sense, that the Archipelago curbs vacation housing, a measure that the Supreme Court reinforces with favorable rulings the Canary Islands plan to regulate tourist rentals. Two rulings from the High Court support the prohibition of economic activity in real estate.
The newspapers reported on December 16 that seven of the 88 municipalities of the Canary Islands account for more than half (61.8%) of the homes built between 2011 and 2021.
This year, the loss of weight and purchasing power of the island’s middle class was also news in economic matters while there have never been as many rich people as there are now in the Canary Islands. All this while breaking a record of business creation in the Archipelago in the last five years.
In March it was also learned that half of the foreign investment made in the Archipelago comes from tax havens.
The Lebanese group Midis, for its part, buys Apple’s business on the island and in August the leader of Canarian Coalition Beatriz Calzada She becomes the first woman to head the port of Las Palmas.
Also in port matters, it is worth highlighting the news from September that reported that the Canary Islands have lost a third of their fleet in the last 15 years.
Consumption
The Islands, according to official data, are no longer the richest of the outermost regions. Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion and the Azores are ahead of an Archipelago where seven out of ten families have problems making ends meet.
Leading the rise in food prices, in March it was known how ranchers were being forced to sacrifice cows and goats due to the high cost of feeding them.
The rise in prices in April causes chicken and fish to fall out of a basic shopping basket in the Canary Islands, a situation that worsens with England’s decision to close the sale of potatoes to the Canary Islands due to a plague, although Scotland and Ireland They alleviate the lack of this food. Another plague, this time of cochineal, sentences the prickly pear trees of the islands, especially those of Gran Canaria and it is not until September 23 that the English potato returns to the Canary Islands.
By the way, all these increases and complications end up causing the price of potato omelette to become more expensive by 23% in one year.
Employment and transportation
For the first time in its history, the Canary Islands reach 875,573 Social Security affiliates and the lowest level of youth unemployment in the Islands in 15 years is recorded.
Hiperdino, with 9,000 employees, is the company that generates the most jobs in the Archipelago.
In June, Uber began operating in the Canary Islands, a region that in July was desperately looking for drivers to buses and trucks.
Binter will open an air bridge with Madrid starting next February and last October it was decided that shuttle buses would connect Santa Cruz de Tenerife with the University of La Laguna to avoid traffic queues.
The Canary Islands, in addition, maintain free buses for another year.
