I was recently on holidays with my husband in Gran Canaria, one of the seven islands of the Canary Islands and the second most populous one. The island is beautiful and the local people are very friendly. They remind me so much to the people from Central America and the Caribbean. For this reason I will consider Gran Canaria like the European Caribbean. During my stay I got to know that the unemployment rates in the island are the highest in Spain and probably one of the highest in Europe. 30% of the local people have no job and this goes up to 50% between youth. I find this totally amazing and besides the general financial crisis I think the main reason for this is the tourism model that the island, as well as all the other coast areas in Spain, has adopted: a massive sun and beach tourism with high dependency on tour operators and cheap prices. Although Gran Canaria received more than 3 million tourists last year the impact on the economy was apparently not enough to improve the local working opportunities.