00:00 Flag-waving crowds packed the streets across Spain's Canary Islands.
00:04 Organizers of the protests say mass tourism has perpetuated an economic model that harms
00:11 local residents and are thus demanding that authorities limit the number of visitors.
00:15 "We are seeing vacation homes invading our villages, which is pushing up rents. Young
00:21 people want to become independent, and we're finding it increasingly difficult,
00:26 as we're thousands of kilometers away from European territory."
00:29 "We Canarians are fed up with being second and third class citizens. We're fed up with
00:36 overcrowding, with institutional mistreatment, with low salaries, with our heritage being destroyed,
00:41 with our land being bought by foreigners because they have more money to buy the
00:45 land of our grandparents that we have not been able to buy."
00:48 Demonstrators also called for a halt to the work on two new hotels in Tenerife,
00:55 the largest and most developed island. In the Canaries, tourism accounts for 36% of the economy
01:02 and employs four out of ten residents. Nonetheless, the amount of tourists can be overwhelming.
01:08 Last year, some 16 million people visited the archipelago,
01:13 more than seven times its population of 2.2 million.
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