PAROS: The sound of drilling echoes early in the morning on the port of Naoussa in Paros, a Greek island very popular with tourists where construction work is being carried out at full speed before the start of a promising tourist season.
Truckers, workers and engineers are busy on various sites on the main road lined with whitewashed houses, shutters and doors painted in blue, green or more rarely in red, in the typical architectural style of the Cyclades archipelago.
Hammer in hand, plumber Nikos Kritikos tears old sewer pipes from a completely renovated building. Nearby, three men are unloading boxes of tiles and ceramic slabs from a truck. The extension work of this old house has made it possible to add three rooms for rent.
"It's crazy, the opening of the season is approaching and everyone is repairing, painting (...) to be on time", says this craftsman from the island.
Opposite, a complex with swimming pool and suites belonging to a real estate fund comes out of the ground, "proof of a dazzling breakthrough of foreign money", assures, circumspect, this fifty-year-old.
"All for profit"
After two years marred by the pandemic, the surge in tourism last year - 27.8 million visitors (+ 89.3% over one year), according to figures from the Bank of Greece - feeds hopes.
Tourism receipts should at least reach the level of 2022 this year (17.6 billion euros), and "according to the most optimistic scenario, exceed those of 2019" (18.1 billion euros), according to Yannis Retsos, President of the Union of Tourism Operators.
"The tourist season this year will be the best," also predicts the mayor of Paros, Markos Kovaios.
Last summer, the population of the island (15,000 inhabitants in normal times) was multiplied by five, according to him.
Hard hit by the financial crisis, Greece has relied heavily on construction and tourism to revive its struggling economy. The latter sector now accounts for almost a quarter of GDP.
Along the winding road linking Naoussa to the traditional villages of Lefkes or Marpissa, construction sites, tourist complexes, luxurious villas with swimming pools and underground accommodation follow one another, some hidden in ravines.
"All for profit, no limits", indignant Kostantis Haniotis in his cafe in Lefkes, complaining of the increase in prices due to "tourist overexploitation".
Laxity
The town hall of Sifnos, another island in the Cyclades, has sounded the alarm over the "unbridled growth" of tourism, calling for measures such as the banning of swimming pools, according to the daily Kathimerini.
On the hills covered with flowering bushes which contrast with the blue of the sky and the Aegean Sea, low stone walls still bear witness to the terrace cultivation that once prevailed on this island. Today, only a few olive groves and vineyards remain, and fishing is practiced mainly for gastronomic purposes.
"In the 1990s, each family built a house for the children (…) Now we don't stop building for tourists", laments Nikos Kritikos.
The craftsman fears that Paros will become like the very fashionable and neighboring Mykonos, which offers luxury holidays and attracts the international jet set.
At the beginning of March, the violent attack by unknown persons on an archaeologist in charge of examining building permits in Mykonos caused a great stir.
This attack, described as "mafia" by the authorities, revealed the chronic irregularities in the construction industry, an endemic problem in Greece.
Controls often take place after building permits have been issued, and the only solution in the event of irregularities "remains the fine, which no one fears because there is too much money" at stake in tourism, denounces Despina Koutsoumpa, President of the Union of Greek Archaeologists.
Panagiotis Galanis, a lawyer specializing in planning law, points out that "the authorities are often lax for economic reasons because tourism has become a heavy industry in the country".
The mayor of Paros, however, assures that controls have been intensified this year.
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