Hospitality workers across the Canary Islands are threatening to strike over the busy Easter holiday period in an ongoing dispute over pay.

Spain’s two major trade unions – CCOO (Comisiones Obreras) and UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores) – have put forward a proposal for a one-off payment or a 7.75 per cent wage increase for hotel, restaurant and bar staff across the Spanish archipelago aimed at offsetting spiralling living costs for workers.

According to Canarian Weekly, employers are seriously considering the one-time payment option as a possible solution to avoiding industrial action.

In addition to improved compensation, CCOO is also arguing for better working schedules and improved conditions for housekeeping staff as part of the negotiations.

Authorities are keen to avoid the protests that swept the islands in 2024 when tens of thousands of people flooded the streets calling for an urgent rethink of the islands’ tourism strategy.

Activists insisted that the protests were not aimed at individual tourists, but at a government that favours investors over local communities.

Tourism accounts for around 35 per cent of the Canary Islands’ GDP, but local people say unfettered development is putting natural resources under major strain and pricing them out of the rental market.

Figures from Spain’s National Statistics Institute show that 33.8 per cent of people in the Canaries are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, the highest proportion for any region except Andalucía.

Many hospitality workers are forced to live in a series of motorhome sites that have arisen across the south of the island because they can’t afford anything else.

Activists argue that hospitality wages fail to cover the basic cost of living, which is affecting many people around the globe, but has been felt keenly in the Canaries as almost everything is imported.

“The problem isn’t the tourists,” Víctor Martín, a spokesperson for the collective Canarias se Agota – The Canaries Have Had Enough – which helped to coordinate protests in 2024, said last year.

“It’s a model that was built around, and with the connivance of, a business class that doesn’t want to listen to what needs to be done, and with a political class that serves that business class instead of serving all the citizens.”

The proposal is currently under review by the employers’ association in Las Palmas, with a final decision expected on Tuesday (1 April).

The news comes just weeks after a judge in the Canary Islands blocked the archipelago’s first tourist tax in Mogán – one of the region’s most popular tourist destinations – just one day after it was introduced, arguing that it was “poorly written” and “confusing”.

The Independent has contacted Comisiones Obreras and Unión General de Trabajadores for comment.