Lanzarote: el papel de la crisis - Fundación César Manrique

MORE TOURISM! THE WAR IS ON!
Federico Aguilera Klink
The logic behind the economy of tourism in Lanzarote, as in the rest of the Canary Islands,
brings to mind the logic applied by Groucho Marx in the Far West to keep his engine going
in that hair-raising race. Just as Groucho decided to start destroying the carriages of the
train so as to use them to fuel the boiler, here, the same logic has been applied for some
time now. The engine of touristic growth and mass concentration is relentlessly destroying
the train made up of carriages in the form of islands, burning it up as each day passes in the
raging boiler of the economic logic of pseudo-progress going nowhere.
The difference lies in the fact that Groucho had a very clear objective: that of catching up
with the con man who had the deed of the mine, whereas, in Lanzarote, a Reserve or (Mine)
of the Biosphere, the engine feeds on this would-be reserve, while running to benefit but a
few, oblivious of all the social and environmental costs involved. Moreover, we know that we
are deteriorating and using up the mine in a completely irreversible way, although this
depletion is disguised beneath the publication of figures known as growth indicators. Like
magical totem-poles, their purpose is to persuade people to take no notice of the reality they
see before them and to have faith in all these figures, making them think that what they are
seeing is a different reality. The problem is that these indicators are looked on as being
187