Maspalomas

Before tourism, Maspalomas was the name of a small hamlet on the site of today's San Fernando de Maspalomas, at the dry southern tip of Gran Canaria. The origin of the name is uncertain: it may come from Rodrigo Mas de Palomar, a soldier and settler from Mallorca, or from Francisco Palomar, a Genoese friend of the conqueror Alonso Fernández de Lugo who settled in the area. For centuries the coast here was empty, and its main landmark was the lighthouse built at Punta de Maspalomas. Planned from 1861 and designed by the engineer Juan León y Castillo, it was first lit on 1 February 1890 to guide ships sailing between Europe and the Americas.

The modern resort was invented on paper. In 1961 the landowner Alejandro del Castillo, who owned most of the land, held an international ideas competition open to architects worldwide; it was won by the French firm SETAP, whose plan covered 1,060 hectares and 19 kilometres of coast. Large-scale building began in the 1960s, and through the 1960s and 1970s hotels began to encroach on the dunes, damaging their habitat, until they were protected as a nature reserve. In the same decade a satellite tracking station was built on a hill nearby to support NASA's early human spaceflight programme.

The model of tourist town planning tried here was copied on other islands. Later decades added luxury hotels in Meloneras, two hospitals, schools and shopping centres, and in 2012 the World Tourism Organization held its World Tourism Day in Maspalomas to mark the resort's fifty years. The lighthouse reopened to the public in 2019 after ten years closed.

Maspalomas is a holiday town first, and much of its culture is shaped by the visitors who return to it each winter. Many come from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands, and the resort has foreign schools, an English-language newspaper and a mixed community of long-staying residents alongside the Canarians who work there.

It is also one of the best-known LGBT destinations in Europe. Playa del Inglés has been associated with gay travellers for decades; the Yumbo Centrum and the streets around it hold dozens of bars, clubs and cabarets, and the annual Maspalomas Pride in May has been described as one of the largest Pride events in Europe, with more than 100,000 people attending in 2011. A stretch of the beach by the dunes is a popular gay beach, and the locals, in a largely Catholic island, have embraced this side of the resort.

Carnival, in February, is the other great festival, part of a season that fills the Canary Islands with parades and costume parties every winter. Outside the festivals, life revolves around the beach, the promenade and the shopping centres, which come alive after dark. Inland the older Canarian identity is closer at hand: the mountain villages of the island keep their own festivals and crafts, some of which are displayed inside the lighthouse.

About 13,500 people were registered as residents of the Maspalomas enclave in 2019, against more than 87,000 beds offered to visitors, so the population present at any time is many times larger than the census figure. The resort makes up the southern part of the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, the largest in area in the Canary Islands, whose old village capital lies in the mountains inland.

Tourism is almost the whole economy. The districts of San Fernando and El Tablero were built for people working in hotels, restaurants and shops, while Sonnenland was built for foreign residents. The resort has its own hospitals, private clinics, Spanish, English and Swedish schools, casinos and convention centres, which makes it a working town as much as a holiday strip.

The rhythm follows the seasons rather than the week: busiest from late autumn to Easter, with a second rush of Spanish families in summer. Mornings belong to the beach and the promenades, evenings to the terraces of Meloneras and the bars of Playa del Inglés. A railway linking the south to the airport and Las Palmas has been planned for years but not confirmed, and most residents depend on buses and cars.

The food of Maspalomas is international, cooked for visitors from all over Europe, but Canarian dishes are easy to find. Papas arrugadas, wrinkly potatoes, are the signature: small local potatoes boiled unpeeled in heavily salted water and left to dry in the pot until a fine salt crust forms, eaten by hand and dipped in mojo. Mojo is a family of sauces of olive oil, local peppers, garlic, paprika and cumin or coriander; mojo rojo is red and spicy, mojo verde green. Papas arrugadas are sometimes served with conejo en salmorejo, a rabbit stew.

Gofio, a flour made from roasted grain such as wheat or maize, is an old staple of the islands and holds a European protected designation. Bienmesabe, a sweet of honey, egg yolk and ground almonds, is a common dessert, and ron miel, honey rum, is drunk as a shot, often with a little lime juice. Goats supply the islands' meat and cheese.

The resort's own market on Avenida Alejandro del Castillo is held on Wednesdays and Saturdays and turns into a flea market on Sundays. For eating out, the Meloneras promenade and the beach end near the lighthouse have the sea-view terraces, Playa del Inglés has the broadest choice at every price, and many visitors drive along the coast to the harbour restaurants of Puerto de Mogán.