SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 21 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Podemos Canarias has presented this week to the Table of the ‘Pacto de las Flores’, the highest coordination body between the parties that currently make up the Government of the Canary Islands, its proposed Law on the tax on tourist stays, better known as ‘ecotax’, in order to comply with the agreement signed in 2019 to implement in the archipelago an instrument capable of “cushioning” the “more negative” effects of mass tourism activity and “stimulating sustainability practices” in this sector.
“We are extremely happy to announce that we are presenting a first text to the pact to turn the ecotax, one of our government’s commitments, into a fact,” Laura Fuentes, regional coordinator of Podemos Canarias, told reporters.
The parliamentary spokesman for Sí Podemos Canarias (Podemos Canarias, Sí Se Podemos y Equo), Manuel Marrero, assured that the initiative responds to “the desire to start transforming the productive system of the islands towards a more sustainable and respectful model with biodiversity and the territory.”
The leader of Podemos Canarias recalled that “the model projected for the islands during the last 40 years, in which mass tourism has been central, has a B side that translates into enormous problems of mobility, housing, environmental erosion and inequality for the island people.
For this reason, the legislative proposal of Podemos Canarias, which consists of 19 articles distributed over 4 titles and two additional provisions, proposes the amount of overnight stays in a range of between 1 and 3 euros per night, depending on the type of accommodation , destined for a Sustainability and Resilience Fund whose purpose will be to finance projects aimed at environmental conservation, job placement and the protection of vulnerable families, among other objectives.
For this reason, the text plans to create an interdepartmental table in which members of the Government of the Canary Islands, social agents and representatives of the environmental associations of the islands would participate in a collegiate manner in the management of the funds collected through the ecotax.
“We are talking about a measure that had to be postponed due to the successive crises that we have experienced in the last three years, and that today can finally be put on the table,” said Fuentes.
In this regard, Marrero stressed that “despite the resistance and the dubious arguments against, the recovery of tourism is evidence, the ecotax must be, therefore, a reality.”
Fuentes concluded by saying that “civil society on the islands is strongly calling for another archipelago to be drawn up in which all economic activity is at the service of caring for people and ecosystems, and the eco-tax is a brave first step to start this process”.
