Last week, fire came down on this island. Some of you lost land. Some lost beehives, trees, years of work. Biodiversity lost far more still. We are here today because of that fire, and we are here, above all, for those it touched.
But let’s be honest with one another. This fire did not fall from the sky by chance. It is what happens to an island asked to carry more and more, year after year, with no one ever stopping to ask whether it could.
We saw it this summer, when our own recycling centre had to close, while contracts and tenders came and went without a solution. And now we have seen it in the flames. Different symptoms. The same disease: an island pushed beyond what it can support.
Every year, more construction. Every year, more tourist beds. Every year, more pressure on the same water, the same roads, the same forests, the same firefighters. No one ever sat down to decide how much Paros could carry. It happened this way, one permit at a time, while some told us to be grateful to the tourists. Ask yourself: how many more summers like this one, before we admit that this island has a limit?
So here is what we are asking. Not forever. Not a war on tourism. We are asking the authorities, today, for a STOP: a real pause on new permits for tourist accommodation, until someone tells us, honestly, how much this island can actually support. If we don’t know the answer, we have no reason to add a single new bed.
This cannot be a day’s anger that fades with the smoke by tomorrow evening. If you believe Paros needs a limit, join us. Sign the petition, come to the next meeting, keep asking the question after the cameras and microphones are gone — because they will leave, and the beds will keep being built if we don’t stay here, still pushing back.
Paros is not for sale by the square meter. It is our home, and it has limits. Today, we are simply asking: STOP; and let us find together where those limits lie, before we lose still more.
This STOP now has a name: the petition “No New Tourist Beds on Paros”. Sign it, share it, and let’s turn this limit into a collective decision before the island sets it for us, as it has just done, through fire.
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