ECONOMY GROUP, 21st of April, 2011

The Canary islands are situated between 28 degrees north and 15 degrees west, which comprehends the subtropical belt. Due to the trade winds the north of the islands is very humid, with lots of precipitation, meanwhile the south is more desertic. In the 15th century the Canarias were conquered by the Spanish and they exchanged the products with the natives, who until then used agriculture only for self sufficency.

The economy of the islands was based on three fundaments:
1. number and quantity of resources available on the island;
2. comercial realtions with other continents;
3. number of inhabitants.

During the history there were regular crises in each century:
1. sugar cane: it was exported to Europe, the crisis emerge when the production of Cuba become cheaper (16th century);
2. vineyard: exportation to England, it's destroyed because of the sickness filoxera (19th century);
3. bananas and tomatoes: because of more competent, cheaper production of other countries (19th, 20th century);
4. tourism: it emerged in the 19th century with high quality tourism, later in 50s and 60s of the 20th century due to the Marshall plan started the massive tourism. The prices of the flights were going down, because the number of tourists was increasing. In the past few years there was a crisis, because the demand was lower than the offer (due to the mass construction of hotels) and the tourist focus is only on the south of the islands (better weather, because of that in the north the quality is going down). Recently it started to recover, mainly because of the conflicts in the countries of north Africa.