Simon Hunter
THE president of Andalucia, Juanma Moreno, has once again ruled out a tourist tax for the region.
Speaking on Thursday in the regional parliament, he argued that his conservative Partido Popular (PP) is not in favour of ‘imposition’, and added that ‘there is no social backing’ for such a levy.
Moreno was responding to a question from politician Jose Ignacio Garcia, of the left-wing Adelante Andalucia party.
Garcia warned that without a tax to pay for public services, there was a risk that the region was set to become a ‘beach club for the guiris’, using the slang Spanish word for (usually North European) foreigners.
The PP leader responded by saying that Garcia’s analysis had ‘high demagoguery’ and that it ‘was not the vision of the vast majority of Andaluces’, according to comments reported in online daily El Diaro.
To back his argument, Moreno cited a study that showed 84% of Andalusians are against the idea of introducing new taxes on tourism.
The regional president also pointed to measures that his administration has put in place since coming to power back in 2019, claiming that his government had worked to ‘improve the quality’ of tourism, and reduce the seasonal nature of the sector, ‘with hotels open all year round’.
Moreno also accused the Adelante Andalucia party of ‘tourism-phobia’, while its leftist politician Jose Ignacio Garcia responded by claiming a tourist tax would raise €200 million for public services.
Currently only three cities in Spain have a tourist tax in place: Barcelona, Girona and Palma de Mallorca.
There has been a rising anti-tourism sentiment in Spain in recent years, which culminated a few weeks ago in major demonstrations on the Canary Islands, demanding a new model for the sector that would protect the environment and also locals’ access to affordable accommodation.
