According to the data of the 2021 Register Tenerife was the most populated island of the Canary Islands, but the Gran Canarians were the largest group of the Canarian population. How is this apparent contradiction possible? Of the 2,172,944 inhabitants of the archipelago at the time, 693,383 were born in Gran Canaria, 620,477 in Tenerife, 439,438 abroad and 183,894 in the rest of Spain. Recently the debate on the need to control population growth has been reopenedand a former president of the government, who advocated for it, accused the Canarian universities in the press of not contributing to the debate. Picking up the glove, I will invite you here to reflect on some issues, starting from the idea that the contribution of universities to public debate, to the extent that it contributes to the rigorous analysis of reality, involves making us see facts that often escape analysis not qualified.
Population growth in the Canary Islands is an incontestable fact. Between 1986 and 2021 the islands have gone from 1,466,391 inhabitants to 2,172,944. The growth has occurred above all in those islands and territories where tourism development has been strongest, and in that period Fuerteventura has gone from just over 30,000 to almost 120,000 inhabitants, and Lanzarote has practically tripled its population, going from 56 to 156,000 inhabitants. But the island that in absolute terms has grown the most, gaining more than 317,000 inhabitants and increasing its population by more than a third (34%) is Tenerife, while Gran Canaria, in the same period, has ‘only’ grown by 22%, gaining 190,000 new inhabitants. It does not seem unreasonable to think that these figures are related to the attraction of labor for tourism development, nor that the fact that Tenerife has grown in beds and tourists more than Gran Canaria has to do with the fact that it has also grown more in inhabitants. When voices are raised asking to control the growth of tourism to control the population, there are those who say that it is difficult to control the market. And when it is said that it is difficult to control the movement of people within the European Union, there are those who say that it could fit in with our condition as peripheral citizens. Of course things are always more complex.
What are we talking about when we say that the demographic growth of the islands has to do with ‘people who come from abroad’? If we limit ourselves to people who come from abroad, there would be two ways of counting ‘people who come from abroad’: on the one hand, nationality and, on the other, place of birth. And the figures do not coincide: in 2021 there were 439,438 people born abroad in the Canary Islands, but only 287,826 of the residents on the islands did not have Spanish nationality. Why? simply because place of birth and nationality do not always coincide: In accordance with our citizenship rights, there are people who were born abroad, but have Spanish nationality. If we look at the nationality, the most frequent in the islands, after the Spanish, is the Italian, with more than 50,000 residents. But if we look at the country of birth, the one with the most births in the Canary Islands, after Spain, is Venezuela, since more than 73,000 residents of the Canary Islands were born in that country. What happens is that less than 20,000 are registered with Venezuelan nationality, while the remaining 53,000 people born there and residing in the Canary Islands are registered with Spanish nationality or from other EU countries, such as Italy. Which also helps to understand why in the Canary Islands there are fewer registered people born in Italy (40,000) than people with Italian nationality (50,000): Many people born in Venezuela live among us who, having Italian citizenship, enjoy the same rights as other EU citizens. If we break down the analysis by islands, and we look at the fact that more than 70% of people born in Venezuela reside in Tenerife, this should make us reflect on the principles of “Canarian citizenship” based on which, in the event of If allowed by EU law, residence on the islands could be limited. A person who now lives in Tenerife, who is the son and grandson of people from Tenerife, but was born in Venezuela… shall we consider him a Canarian or not? Is it ‘our people’?
I would prefer to control the tourist growth to the residence. But because I care about ‘our land’. And that, as Weber would say, is as “value-rational” an option as other options can be considered “instrumentally rational.”
The defense of ‘our people’ seems to be the motto of some of the formations that call themselves nationalists and that advocate population control. But, Who do we consider ‘our people’? In Taco, Los Silos or Arona it may be difficult for many not to consider ‘their people’ people with whom they have family ties just because they were born in another country, Venezuela. To me, who grew up with a marine grandfather who had spent his life traveling to the Sahara, and who For as long as I can remember, I have remembered Las Palmas de Gran Canaria as a city full of Swedes, Koreans, blacks and Moors with djellaba, sorry for the not very politically correct terms, It’s hard for me not to consider all of them as ‘my people’ just because they have a different color, religion or eating habits. I have been a professor at a university in the Canary Islands for quite some time, and if I had to summarize what sociology can contribute to public debates, I would focus on two ideas: 1) things are always more complex than they seem and 2) precisely because of what previous, it is difficult to say that a political position is based on ‘scientific’ arguments. A position is rational or not depending on what values we consider. I, personally, would rather control tourism growth than control residence. But that also has to do with the fact that I care about ‘our land’, the place where we live. And that, as Weber would say, can be considered as “value-rational” an option as other options can be considered “instrumentally rational.”
