Presented here is a preview of research carried out with several comrades on the effects of mass tourism on class composition in various sectors of activity. The research I have carried out is a co-research inquiry together with hotel cleaners, most of them organised within the Kellys (labour organisation for hotel cleaners), in different hotels (of different categories, luxury resorts, hostels, touristic apartments) in the south of the island of Gran Canaria. For fear of reprisals, the comrades have asked for their names to remain anonymous and have proposed pseudonyms that I have used in the article.

This inquiry takes place in a very particular context for the Canary Islands and the Spanish State. On the 20th of April 2024, a new cycle of mobilisations began in the archipelago, which has so far taken the form of a series of demonstrations (the last one on the 20th of October 2024). This has involved rallies and mass actions on the eight islands. This is a historic mobilisation because of the enormous level of support it had and still has among the population and because of its profound political implications. These point to the deep social contradictions generated by the tourist production model, and its permanent massification. This context reframes a political scenario in which the social movement returns to the centre of struggle. It draws out a question that runs through our work of inquiry, that of reproduction.

One of the collectives at the forefront of these mobilisations is the Kellys, which brings together cleaning workers, especially hotel cleaners, for whom these processes of mobilisation around life and reproduction represent a high point of struggle since the first interventions of the collective in 2017. But who are the Kellys? And how are they organised?

The Kellys collective was founded in 2016 in the city of Barcelona during the institutional crystallisation of the different social movements that emerged in the heat of 15M. Also called the“indignados” movement, this sequence of mass mobilisation confronted the Spanish State on May 15th 2011 to oppose the austerity plans driven by Brussels and the social-democratic government and political corruption. It demanded the democratisation of the political sphere, and was very important in the development of new social and political movements, such as the tenant unions and the Kellys. The latter was organised by a group of hotel cleaners in a city marked by growing touristification and accelerated processes of gentrification. The collective emerged in this context, organising strikes, targeting those responsible for precarious working conditions, and highlighting the plight of the predominantly female workforce who lacked social and material recognition. Similar organisations soon formed along the coast and archipelagos, amplifying the collective’s influence and establishing it as a key protagonist in feminist critiques of mass tourism.

At the time of their foundation, the Kellys (a contraction of “las que limpian”, an appellative that points to their historical invisibility) publicly launched a manifesto which outlined their main demands and objectives:

• Early retirement from the age of 58 which would give a legal recognition of arduous work. ¹

• Recognition of medical conditions directly related to the work, especially those affecting the motor and musculoskeletal system.

• NO to outsourcing: to guarantee equality of contracting and to prevent the illegal transfer of workers.

This basic program remains in effect eight years after its approval, despite numerous legal victories in cases of wrongful dismissals, extensions of sick leave, and the granting of permanent leave and disability. However, these victories have done little to improve their situation, which most cleaners describe as worse than before, at least in the Canary Islands. Within two years following the pandemic, the Canary Islands became the third most popular tourist destination in Spain. According to data from trade unions, 15,000 women work as hotel cleaners in the Canary Islands.

Yaiza, a well-known activist, tells us, as she points to her sash with signs of obvious pain: “now there are almost 17 million tourists coming to the islands every year, a huge number compared to the 4 million who came before, which was already a lot for us”. Alongside other comrades, she continues to participate in union structures while remaining active in the Kellys movement. She tells us, “the workloads have increased by 25%, which has not translated into an increase in the workforce, let alone in wages”.

At the beginning of March, a month before the mobilisations on the 20th of April, some comrades from the association recognised us at a rally in front of the Department of Tourism. The protest was to demand the regulated installation of elevating beds in hotels, which would alleviate the weight of the mattresses. Gara and Pilar tell us that the hotel manager intercepted them at the staff exit door: “the guy told us that image is very important, that we are also part of the image of the hotel and therefore we should always have the smile of hostesses”. Pilar, who works for a temporary employment agency only during the high season says: “I don’t know if this man actually knows that he is talking to two people, either we are ghosts or we are unicorns, I don’t even know anymore”. This clearly highlights the lack of social recognition for this feminised workforce, whose labour is redefined and romanticised - even when paid - as a personal service to guests. The material labour process remains invisible, while they are overly visible as caricatures of devoted hosts - always smiling, always available, masking an ever-increasing workload. The ghost and the unicorn.

Ale, who works in a tourist complex in the south of Gran Canaria, is 36 years old and has been working as a cleaner for 20 years: “We used to have 16 or 17 rooms per person. Now we get 25 or 26, including check outs. It’s a constant stress that you feel every time you receive this work report each morning, because you see that you can’t get everything done in the duration of your working day. As they don’t expand the workforce much, you are forced to stay two or three hours longer, often without pay”. There are cases of hotels where workers have reported cleaning shifts of 52 rooms per person: “That’s less than 10 minutes per room”.

Fefa, 68, a former cleaner, a militant of the now defunct MIRAC (Movimiento de izquierda revolucionaria del Archipiélago canario, an important marxist and anticolonial party in the 80s) and the SOC (Sindicato obrero canario), recounts the moment when she went from working as a day labourer in the tomato fields of the Count of La Vega Grande, where she was exploited by British export franchises, to working in one of the first hotels to open on the island: “When we started working in the hotel we noticed a huge difference, we had a fixed salary, which did not change at the whim of the foreman on duty, we had some holidays, and even the possibility of sick leave; but little by little problems arose”.

The hotel industry in the south of the island developed following the International Tourism Fair held in Maspalomas in 1960, as part of the National Reorganisation Plan initiated by the Franco regime. One of its main promoters was the Count of La Vega Grande, a landowner whose plantations covered nearly the entire southern part of the island. This restructuring of the productive model and forms of accumulation began through the exploitation of rural and peasant labour that became available after the dismantling of the plantations and the repression of the cooperative movement. Men were mainly employed in construction, and women in hotels as cleaners. From the invisibility of the harvesting and the packing of tomatoes to invisibility in the hotel. But also, from political and collective organisation in the tomato fields to organisation in the hotels: class power follows these recompositions.

Marcia is 57 years old and has been a cleaner for 25 years. It will be almost a year since she had to take sick leave because of physical ailments: “I can’t take any more. I have problems with my joints, my neck, my hips, my rotator cuff… I have osteoarthritis in my knees, in my hips, in my rotator cuff. I have osteoarthritis in my knees and shoulders, as well as rheumatoid arthritis. All this is accompanied by a tremendous depression. I take one pill for depression, one for sleep, one for my joints and one for very intense pain”, she explains. According to Comisiones Obreras reports, 71% of housekeepers suffer from generalised anxiety disorders and are on medication to help them cope with the working day. Seven out of 10 develop mental illnesses and the rate of accidents at work is around 21.11%. This highlights not only the toxicity of the daily tasks but also an entire labour system that disregards the physical impact of this work.

Strikes and rallies in front of hotels, companies, and institutions linked to tourism promotion - these movements have used many political tools over the years. But there is one which is particularly illustrative, and which has meant a significant recomposition of the labour process: the organisation of absenteeism (sitting at 15 / 20% of the labour force). From one perspective, this can be understood as a cumulative result of tiredness due to the working conditions. But, collectively, it can also understood in its practical dimension, as an expression of rejection of the very process that makes the workers ill. It is a form of immediate political resistance that manifests itself in a simple gesture of not going to work. We see in the collective enunciation of this gesture a form of political subjectivation, beyond the suffering of a painful condition. Celeste, who has been off work for more than a year, tells us: “I’m not going back to work there like before, and neither are many of my colleagues. We are organising ourselves to share out the absences and not to burden ourselves anymore. We often leave rooms undone, we cover for each other, but unfortunately, they’re getting the hang of it”. The reality is that employers and management often respond with dismissals or hiring bans on Kellys or workers connected, in any way, to acts of ‘indiscipline.’ For example, Ale tells us that a comrade of hers had to travel to Almería to find work.

The hotel employers’ association has issued warnings and, in fact, has begun encouraging hotel groups to expand outsourcing, primarily through temporary employment agencies (ETTs). This outsourced workforce is not covered by the hospitality industry’s collective bargaining agreement; instead, their working conditions are negotiated directly with the company, stripping them of collective bargaining power. Outsourcing leads to severe labour inequality in terms of wages, working conditions, rights, job insecurity, and collective representation. Gabriela, a union representative and worker at a bungalow complex, explains: ‘This is no coincidence - it’s the business model of outsourcing. Multiservice companies remain competitive at our expense, by stripping us of our rights. The inequality in the workplace is so extreme that we Kellys openly call it discrimination. The workload keeps increasing, breaks are not respected, and the underpayment of social security contributions is widespread. We end up being paid as little as half of what we are entitled to. Outsourcing also introduces a piece-rate system, where we are paid by the amount of work we complete. This not only worsens our working conditions but also severely harms our health, with all the additional complications that come with it.

Gabriela is Colombian and has been working in the Canary Islands for 7 years in different hotels. In that time, she has noticed how the exploitation of the migrant workforce has increased considerably and in parallel with the increase in outsourcing, perhaps even as an effect of the latter. These observations are in no way different from the statements made by the hotel employers’ association, whose president recently stated, as a possible response to absenteeism among cleaners, that: “we have to start bringing in women from outside to work, because there are none in Tenerife”. The comments unleashed a great deal of indignation among the workers because of their colonial and sexist character, and made the president of the employers’ association the target of subsequent mobilisations.

From what has been explained above and from Gabriela’s testimony, we can see that in recent decades, there has been a significant shift in the technical composition of the working class in the Canary Islands. Moreover, this shift also reflects a change in the social composition, as Notes from Below would say, with female and migrant labor increasingly prevalent in the hotel industry. This transformation has led to a reshaping of the political landscape, extending historical demands - made more visible by the Kellys but with deep roots - to include new ones, such as the abolition of the foreigners law, the recognition of the hotel industry agreement as the only legitimate form of contracting, and the prohibition of outsourcing.

To conclude, we would like to present an reflection that emerged in the course of this research, and which attempted to answer the question of who the tourist is? During our work we met a middle-aged German couple, he was an administrative worker in a public hospital, and she was a nurse. Their expectations were that: “we wanted a place with sun and a beach to be able to relax”. A retired Austrian postman and a friend of his who is a railway driver, both in their 60s said: “We come here every year, and we always come back rested and with renewed energy”. A Swedish retired couple, he worked in a bottling factory and she in a retirement home, told us: “A few years ago we bought a bungalow, we spent long periods of time here enjoying our retirement”. A 29-year-old from the UK, who did not specify his profession, told us that he came on an all-inclusive package, which is very popular with tourists visiting the Canaries (almost 54% book through tour operators), especially those from the working classes.

Although the sample is not large enough to draw definitive conclusions, it does open up a line of inquiry. What we observe is that a significant proportion of guests tend to come from the working classes in Europe - people who are tired and generally exhausted. Tourism, as a leisure industry, and the trajectories it creates, prompt us to reconsider the question of reproduction and reproductive labour from a global perspective. This allows us to see how European and metropolitan labour power is, in part, sustained by the feminised Canarian and migrant workforce during the holiday period. This form of exploitation of reproductive labour is captured by Yaiza, who says: ‘I’m already realising that I’m often cleaning the toilet for a woman who probably spends her life cleaning toilets at home.