SOCIAL GROUP, 25th April 2011

Visit to Maspaloma’s tourist resort, sand dunes and Melonera’s coast.

Today we have seen much more about social geography than the day before. A human geography professor from the university of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has been guiding us through the tourist gradient resort of Maspalomas. For that, we have been taught the recent history of south Gran Canaria. It was not until the 30s when the owner, of the almost whole south of the island, the Conde de la Vega Grande, decided to explode agriculturally that territory. It was not till the early 60s when he realized it was better to shift, thus he tried to gain money with the incipient tourism, especially based on a characteristic landscape and on a specific offer, sun and sand. The first tourism settlements had many infrastructural and lack of capital problems. It was not therefore until the end of the decade when this area was developed as a tourist area, specially for Scandinavian company employees. With the 73s oil crisis the tourism developed went down, till the 80s, concretely when in 1986 Spain joined the European Union, bringing money both from the UE and the new tourists. That also attracted people to that place, first from the islands and the others one of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, and more recently from north Africa and Southamerica.

The municipality of San Bartolomé, where we are, had not any node near by the sea, so the urbanization process had not any foundations from which it could develop. Thus the urbanization process started from zero, and all new urban areas were used for tourism use. The main idea nowadays is consequently the spatial social structure, so that we have three clear urban areas. Playa del Inglés is the first area which was developed, being now a gradient tourist resort. At the other side of the sand dunes and the Maspaloma’s golf course we have Melonera’s coast, a new tourism resort developed since the 90s, full of four and five stars hotels. Furthermore, we have El Tablero, a neighbourhood born as a tourist industry and construction workers.

So today we have discussed where exactly we want to do our field work. It seems both interesting the case we have just described, and also Mogán municipality case, where we would be able to see the relation between an old town and the new tourist resort located down the beach. Tomorrow we will most likely visit Mogán in order to decide which option we will choose.