Many of you may have noticed a big clamp down going on across Tenerife over the last month to 6 weeks. The police are out every night with the Gruas, moving cars from the daft places they have always obstructed. Bar and restaurant PR’s have been pushed back onto their property , new standardised umbrellas and awnings have been imposed on bars, Unelco have flexed their muscles, taken out their power junction boxes and closed bars and now illegally moored boats have been turfed out of Los Cristianos harbour, although some have only moved a short way and stand off Las Vistas beach.

As a cynical old git who doesn’t believe in coincidence, may I point out that this has all happened since the government have started to issue realistic tourism figures that show the mess Tenerife and the other Canary Islands are in. It seems the word has been passed down from on high to tighten up on all those small infringements of the law that have been overlooked for years.

You can expect another stamp of authority at the end of this month when hundreds of ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) reps arrive on Tenerife for their annual conference. The British market has been falling more than any other, September figures show an 11 % drop in Brits on the previous year and this week more stats show the Canary Islands have lost One Million foreign tourists between 2001 and 2006.

Just a little insight into how the tourism department works. This Monday, both airports were due to start handing out little boxes of 3 bananas to all tourists coming in, complete with useful tourist information. Some news sources even said the promotion had been running already for a few weeks. I went to Reina Sofia on Monday to get a nice pic for Think Spain Today and yes, they had no bananas. I was told the promotion is now not starting until today, Thursday, we shall see. I’m sure those tourists wont miss their free bananas but it was a nice idea and at least showed some imagination but as always it was poorly carried out.