Maspalomas Dunes

The Maspalomas Dunes (Spanish: Dunas de Maspalomas) are sand dunes located on the south coast of the island of Gran Canaria, Province of Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands. A 404-hectare (1,000-acre) area of the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, they have been protected as a nature reserve. They were one of the contenders in the 12 Treasures of Spain competition.

References

Coordinates: 27°44′28″N 15°34′55″W / 27.741°N 15.582°W / 27.741; -15.582

Maspalomas

Maspalomas (/ˌmɑːspəˈlɒməs/, Spanish: [maspaˈlomas], locally: [mahpaˈlomah]) is a tourist town in the south of the island of Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, stretching from Bahía Feliz in the east to Meloneras in the west, including the resort towns of San Agustín and Playa del Inglés. Maspalomas constitutes the southernmost part of the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana.

Overview

Before the era of tourism, Maspalomas was the name of a hamlet in what today is San Fernando de Maspalomas. Its name may derive from that of Rodrigo Mas de Palomar, a settler and soldier from Majorca, or from Francisco Palomar, a Genoese friend of Alonso Fernandez de Lugo who purchased 87 Guanche slaves from Güímar and settled in the area.

Present-day Maspalomas is the result of an ambitious development project, organized in the form of an International Ideas Contest (opened to any member of the International Union of Architects), held in 1961 under the auspice of Alejandro del Castillo, owner and promoter of most of the space under construction. The contest was won by the French office S.E.T.A.P. (incl. the urbanist Langueneau and the economist Michel Meill) and covered the 1,060 ha and 19 km of coast that constitute the core area of Maspalomas - Costa Canaria. The contest paved the way for a particular way of understanding "touristic" urbanism that served as model for later tourists developments in other Canary Islands.