The Tour de France has travelled from Euskal Herria and, fortunately, the huge advertising campaign that accompanied him. The campaign may seem excessive to us, but if we read El Correo it is small. In fact, it would supposedly bring yields above 100 million for an institutional investment of 12 million. A round business, nothing!

This is not the first time we have heard this speech in the face of these kinds of giant events: sports events, fairs or the BBK Live itself. But events happen, like the Tour, and we're getting poorer. Apart from doubts about the calculation of the economic benefits and the millions involved in these exercises, this type of initiative has one single objective: the increase of the economic model based on tourism. In theory, this model carries significant flows of money and wealth, all a benefit. But how does tourism really work in the economy?

Firstly, it is known that jobs structured in tourism are low skilled, i.e. low wages and, in general, temporary. If these millions do not go to our salaries, where do they go? What about saving these salaries? Return on capital owners. These benefits are not shared with society as a whole, but are geared towards increasing the current economic model. They usually come from large investment funds, based on housing investment and hardly taxed. Instead of investing in the interests of citizens, it is invested in sectors based on speculation and precariousness. Clear examples are those produced in Mallorca, Menorca, Valencian Country or the Canary Islands, where per capita income in the last 30 years is the area of the Spanish State that has grown the least in the last 30 years, the least investment in R&D and the greatest inequality.

Did we need the Tour and its millions? Do we need tourism? The millions that come from tourism need not mean that these territories should be dependent on tourism. To say this would be like saying that slaves should depend on their owners, or that workers live thanks to entrepreneurs. These are statements based on a limited vision (tourism makes a lot of money), but systematically exclude existing alternatives (there are other models of wealth production based on equity and environmental sustainability). No, we are not the ones who have to be grateful for the Tour, but only the rich.