A Canarian tourist resort has become the first local council in Spain to impose a tourist tax.
Mogán in Gran Canaria, home to upmarket resorts such as Puerto de Mogán and Puerto Rico, will charge each tourist a rate of 15 cents a night during their stay, payable to the council by the owners of the accommodation they are staying in.
While tourist taxes exist in Catalonia and the Balearics, these have been imposed by regional governments instead of local councils. Local councils do not have the power to tax overnight stays, and so the tax in Mogán will be imposed as a charge “for local services”.
Mogán’s Mayor Onalia Bueno said that the tax will be “destined in its entirety to the financing of activities, services or infrastructures in the tourist areas, as well as promotion of the destination”. She claimed that her council “wanted to regulate the effects of tourism without our residents assuming the costs”, and added that Canarian municipal councils were “sick of not receiving any of the €20 billion generated annually by tourism on the islands.”
She pointed out that council taxes were exclusively paid by local residents, even though an average of 44.75% of people in the resort at any given time were tourists; and added that she wanted “the tourists who stay in the municipality to contribute proportionally to the costs that correspond to them for the services and activities that they enjoy during their stay.”
Tourists spent a total of 4.5 million nights in Mogán last year, meaning that, at the initial rate of 15 cents a night, the council would raise just €675,000. This initial rate is far lower than the regional tourist taxes imposed in Catalonia and the Balearics, which range between €1 and €5 per night. But Mayor Bueno claims future adjustments will be “variable”, intended to cover costs.
The Canarian Government has so far rejected any proposals to bring in a regional tourist tax, but Mogán’s decision could provide a precedent for other local councils to impose such a charge.
On Lanzarote, for example, two of the three main resorts are ruled by parties that do not form part of the regional government. Yaiza, where 62% of the population are tourists, is ruled by Mayor Óscar Noda, whose party Unidos Por Yaiza is a local grouping such as the one in Mogán. Meanwhile, Tías, is ruled by Socialist José Juan Cruz, whose party has recently called for the introduction of a Canarian tourist tax.
No comments have yet been made on the Mogán initiative in Lanzarote, but you can be sure that local Mayors will be watching closely in coming months.