They Want to Get Rid of Gay Tourism in Maspalomas (Opinion)
The series is an opinion piece based on real facts. It's all about Maspalomas and the future of gay tourism: the loss of sand, the wind altered by hotels, the 2018 study recycled every year, the double standard between straight and gay sex outdoors. It's all about how Gay Tourism is being pushed out, and why it's a mistake.
INTRODUCTION — THE SENSE OF THIS SERIES
This is not an article in defence of having sex everywhere. And it is not an article against protecting the environment.
My thesis is: Playa del Inglés became famous in the world for 40 years because of a climate of freedom, with unwritten rules. Gay beach, dunes, Yumbo. Everybody knew where you could do what, and it worked.
Today that freedom is being dismantled, not with a ban saying "no gays allowed", but with fines, drones, patrols, and sensationalist articles using the environment and "think of the children" as perfect excuses.
The result is not more protection. The result is that gay tourists feel hunted and unwelcome, and they change destination. And when they leave, Playa del Inglés loses everything: hotel, restaurant, supermarket, bar, not only the cruiser.
PART 1 — THE ENVIRONMENTAL EXCUSE
The dunes of Maspalomas lose 40,000-45,000 m³ of sand every year. The highest dunes were 15 metres in the 1970s. Today they are 6 metres.
Why? The resort of Playa del Inglés was built in the 1960s on a terrace 25 metres above sea level, right in front of the dunes. University studies say it clearly: buildings deflect the winds, accelerate the flow up to +35% in some areas, and create a shadow zone where sand no longer arrives.
Before, sand made a circle: from sea to dunes and back. After the hotels, sand blows out to deep sea and never returns.
The official MASDUNAS restoration project admits it: the degradation is due to urban development changing the natural wind systems.
And yet: no hotel has been demolished. No developer has been fined. No headline says "Hotels are killing the dunes."
They fine the walker: 150, 600, 650 euros. They send drones and quad patrols. They punish the footprint, which is negligible, and protect the buildings, which changed an entire ecosystem of 360 hectares.
If you really want to save the dunes, start with the wind. Not with us.
PART 2 — THE SENSATIONALIST MEDIA
The study is real: "Sand, Sun, Sea and Sex with Strangers", fieldwork in May 2018, published 2021-2022 by ULPGC + Flinders University. 298 sex spots mapped, 5,763 m² occupied, 10 plant species damaged.
But look at how it is used: 2021, 2024, 2025, 2026 — the same data, the same 298 spots, presented as new.
Headlines:
"CNN exposes gay tourism: cruising in the dunes is ruining the destination"
"Police in uniform: cracking down on sexual debauchery in Maspalomas"
"Giant Lizards Choking On Condoms"
A family on the dunes at sunset = a romantic photo.
A gay / fetish group in the same place = an article with details about dog masks, leashes, collars, and a 650 euro fine.
The November 2026 arrest — a Dutch tourist, 4 people camping illegally, an injured ranger — becomes in the comments a story about "gay degradation", even if no one knows who that tourist is.
This is not journalism. It is criminalisation through disgust. You take a behaviour, you make it morbid, you make readers say "fine them all, close everything". Then politicians can respond with more controls and say they are just listening to the people.
Nobody talks about this. If we don't talk about it, this model will disappear in silence.
PART 3 — THE DOUBLE STANDARD
On paper, the cruising ban applies to everyone, not just LGBTQ people. No law says "no gays". That is true.
But a law can be neutral on paper and selective in practice.
Pride was not born against a law saying "no gays allowed". It was born against police raids, selective enforcement, and moral panic. Stonewall was not a written ban. It was police entering only gay bars, while straight bars were left alone.
How many articles, drones, patrols and fines have you seen for straight couples having sex in the dunes? How many headlines about "straight debauchery destroying the dunes"? How many straight influencers have had to delete videos for encouraging sex on the dunes?
Zero.
For decades in Maspalomas and Playa del Inglés there was straight sex on the beach at night, swingers in villas and hotels, straight couples hiding in the bushes of the dunes. Everybody knew. Everybody looked away. Because the money was good, and Playa del Inglés became famous exactly for being free and wild.
The rule applied is not "no outdoor sex". It is "no outdoor sex if you are gay and visible".
A gay couple holding hands on the promenade = welcome gay tourism.
A gay group cruising or doing fetish in the dunes = degradation to be fined.
Gay is accepted as long as it is discreet, consumes, does not show. As soon as it becomes visible, sexual, collective, it becomes a public order problem.
When the money was convenient, they closed their eyes. Now that they want to change the model, they suddenly discover it was all illegal and harmful.
That is not law enforcement. That is selective enforcement.
PART 4 — "THINK OF THE CHILDREN"
To get to the cruising areas in the dunes you have to walk 20-30 minutes in the sand, in the sun, with no shade, cross high dunes, and go voluntarily into dense vegetation where there is nothing for a child.
A child does not get there "by chance". A child gets there only if an irresponsible adult takes him there on purpose.
And if an adult does take a 5-year-old into the dunes at 2pm in August, the problem is not that he might see two men kissing. The problem is heat at 35 degrees, burning sand, dehydration, no one to see you if you feel sick.
Children don't speak, they can't answer back, they can't deny. They are the ideal subject to hit someone else: you act "in the name of children" and you concretely hit gay adults.
It is the old rhetoric:
"Think of the children" to ban gay books in schools.
"Think of the children" to ban Pride.
"Think of the children" to close gay venues.
Now "Think of the children" to close the dunes.
It is not child protection. It is moral panic. You take a legitimate fear — protecting children — and you use it to legitimise control that has nothing to do with children.
If children were really the problem, you would put a sign at the entrance: "Path not suitable for children, dehydration risk". You would not send drones to hunt cruisers.
PART 5 — WHO PROFITS? THE GENTRIFICATION OF GAY SEX
Playa del Inglés lived for 40 years on free outdoor cruising. You came because it was cheap. By day: dunes, free. Gay beach at Kiosk 7, nudity, cruising in the bushes. By night: Yumbo. Cruising was the free advertising of the destination.
Now look at what is happening in parallel:
Old saunas in the historic commercial centres: closed.
New saunas on the main avenue: doing well.
New mega-venue, more than 2,000 m², in a nearby area: doing well.
Cruising bars indoors: selling darkrooms, cabins, slings, glory holes.
At the same time, the Yumbo, the historic centre with around 200 venues, is in crisis. Small bars closed and put up for sale. To the west, Meloneras becomes luxury hotels for families.
It is not that all gay venue owners conspired in a room. It is an alignment of interests: the new, more entrepreneurial, more "indoor" model needs the dunes to be closed. Otherwise, why would anyone pay to go inside?
Before: free, outdoors, anarchic, visible.
Now: paid, indoors, regulated, invisible from the street.
That is the gentrification of gay sex. And the environmental excuse is perfect for it, because no one can say "I'm against the environment", and no one can accuse you of homophobia if you talk about "protecting endemic plants".
My criticism is not about one single bar or one single sauna. It is about the system and the model. The mechanism stays the same, without names.
PART 6 — IT WAS NOT EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE. IT WAS FREEDOM WITH UNWRITTEN RULES.
Let's be honest: it was never "everything, everywhere, without rules".
For 40 years, Playa del Inglés worked because there was a pact, unwritten but clear to everyone who lived it:
The gay beach was at Kiosk 7, not in front of the family hotel.
The cruising was at the end of the dunes, after 20-30 minutes walking, not on the main path.
By day, beach and dunes. By night, Yumbo.
You had your space, we closed an eye.
It was not anarchy. It was freedom, zoned and negotiated. And it worked.
Now they say: if we close the dunes, cruisers will go into clubs and saunas. Desire doesn't disappear, it moves indoors.
But outdoor cruising and indoor cruising are NOT the same product.
Outdoors is: free, in nature, in the sun, spontaneous, no entry fee, no drink obligation, no closing time.
Indoors is: entry fee, drink, dark, closed, at night, with rules.
Some will adapt. Many won't.
And here is the mistake: they think they will only lose the pure cruiser. They will lose three types of tourists:
1. The pure cruiser: he came for the dunes. If you close the dunes, he doesn't go to the sauna. He changes destination. To Sitges, Torremolinos, Mykonos, Lisbon.
2. The complete gay tourist: beach + Yumbo + freedom + maybe a walk in the dunes. If you take away the dunes but leave the rest, maybe he stays. But if he feels hunted by drones, fines of 650 euros, morbid articles, he feels unwelcome. And he leaves anyway.
3. The gay tourist who never cruised: he came for the air of freedom, even if he personally never went into the dunes. But if he sees his friends fined, the atmosphere changed, he understands this is no longer that place.
And when they leave, Playa del Inglés doesn't just lose a cruiser. It loses a whole tourist.
It loses the apartment rented for 2 weeks.
It loses breakfast at the bar, lunch at the chiringuito, dinner at the restaurant.
It loses the supermarket, the taxi, the car rental.
It loses the drink at the Yumbo, because if he is not here, he doesn't even go to the Yumbo.
The indoor venue thinks: "One more customer for me."
The destination loses: "One less tourist for everybody."
And there is a second, different kind of gentrification.
When you open spaces to the "presentable" gay part — gay beach, Pride, flags, DJs, cocktails — the area becomes trendy, safe, cool, Instagrammable.
And when an area becomes trendy and gay-friendly, rents go up, prices go up, rich tourists arrive, big investors arrive. Who benefits? The big new venues, the new saunas, the hotels. Who loses? The small old bars, the cruisers, the low-budget gay tourist who came because it was cheap and free.
So the gay community is used twice: first to make Playa del Inglés cool and famous, then to gentrify it. The clean, sellable gay part is kept. The uncomfortable, sexual, free gay part — the dunes, the cruising — is criminalised and thrown away, because you cannot sell it in a brochure.
That is not a victory for the community. That is using the community to raise prices, and then pushing the community out.
CONCLUSION
No one says "gays out".
The Cabildo says, "we protect the environment".
The newspapers say, "we report facts".
The venue owners say, "we offer a safe alternative".
Families say, "we just want a clean beach".
But the result is the same: Playa del Inglés stays gay in name only. Without free dunes, without outdoor cruising, without the anarchy that made it famous worldwide.
And if you protest, they answer: "What, are you against the environment? Against the rules? Don't you think of the children?"
That is how you get rid of gay tourism without ever saying it. Not with a ban. With fines, drones, morbid articles, and perfect excuses. In silence.
We never asked for everything, everywhere, without rules. We asked to keep the pact that worked for 40 years: protect the dunes, yes. Regulate, yes. Inform, yes. But don't criminalise the very thing that made Playa del Inglés famous in the world.
Because a tourist is not a prisoner. If you take away what he came for, he doesn't obey. He leaves. And his money goes with him, to another destination. What matters is that the discussion starts.
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