A wave of demonstrations have swept the Canary Islands as locals protested against a tourism model they say has plundered the environment, priced them out of housing and forced them into precarious work.

The seven main Canary Islands are home to 2.2 million people - and welcomed almost 14 million international visitors in 2023, up 13% from the previous year. The protests were not aimed at individual tourists, activists say, but at the governments that have created a system that skews so much in favour of investors at the expense of local communities.

The tourism industry accounts for 35% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the Canary Islands and local residents who spoke to Sky News agree the islands can't survive without tourism. But they are also questioning whether local communities and the environment can survive if things stay the way they are.

What's the problem? Tourism is a 'cash cow' - but not for locals If you're looking for what's behind the wave of protests, you need to look back decades, Sharon Backhouse tells Sky News. Along with her Canarian husband, she owns GeoTenerife, which runs science field trips and training camps in the Canary Islands and conducts research into sustainable tourism.

The tourism model in the Canary Islands hasn't been updated since before the tourism boom of the 1980s, when the islands were "trying desperately" to attract investment, she explains. The answer back then was a model that was "incredibly generous" to investors, who only pay 4% tax and can send the profits earned in the Canaries back to the firm's home country, Ms Backhouse explains.

But the model hasn't changed. That's created a situation where "more and more of these giant, all inclusive resort hotels" are being built, and the proceeds of this "incredible cash cow" aren't shared equitably with the local population, she says.

"It is absurd to have a system where so much money is in the hands of a very few extremely powerful groups, and is then funnelled away from the Canary Islands," she says. "We're seeing really low salaries, zero-hour contracts and awful working conditions in some of these hotels." Ms Backhouse was at the 20 April protest in Tenerife and says she has "never seen anything like it" in terms of Canarians being united for a single cause.

'My misery, your paradise' Earlier this year there was a spate of graffiti in Tenerife. Andy Ward, director of Tenerife Estate Agents, tells Sky News the media coverage of a smattering of "tourists go home" graffiti has been "100x greater than the on-the-ground reality.