**1. Introduction: Tourism Development from an Urban Perspective**

The capitals of Mallorca and Gran Canaria are island cities that have developed an early tourist activity since the late nineteenth century. From the fifties of the twentieth century, they responded to mass tourism, increasing their hotel and extrahotel offer in certain neighborhoods like El Terreno, in Palma, and Santa Catalina-Canteras, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. As tourism activity gained importance in other locations of the respective islands, investments in these urban sectors were reduced, and the accommodation infrastructure began to deteriorate. "The elite tourism of the first stage gave way to a mass tourism in the fifties and sixties and to a situation of deep crisis and reconversion since the mid-seventies" [1] (p. 16).

The post-Fordist restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s contributed to the decline of these neighborhoods from the perspective of leisure exploitation and it had important implications for the residential offer. The real estate market revalued some properties of old tourist use, reconverting them into housing, especially those on the seafront, while putting into circulation some of those already obsolescent, for the non-tourist rental market.

From the mid-1990s onwards, a part of the rental housing was occupied by low-income labor immigrants. Therefore, the urban-tourist situation of both neighborhoods showed their uncertain adaptation to the post-Fordist model, with a growing ethnicization, in a

**Citation:** Domínguez-Mujica, J.; González-Pérez, J.M.; Parreño-Castellano, J.M.; Sánchez-Aguilera, D. Gentrification on the Move. New Dynamics in Spanish Mature Urban-Tourist Neighborhoods. *Urban Sci.* **2021**, *5*, 33. https://doi.org/10.3390/ urbansci5010033

Received: 21 January 2021 Accepted: 12 March 2021 Published: 17 March 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

degraded real estate context, despite the administrative initiatives undertaken to improve the public space.

The decline continued well into the 21st century due to the impact of the 2008 economic crisis and onwards. Therefore, the urban-tourist offer was made up of main homes, typical of consolidated neighborhoods; rental homes, of poor quality, which came mostly from the residential reconversion of old tourist properties; smaller tourist establishments; and some large capacity four- and five-star hotels, and some others of lesser size and condition.

However, in the last seven or eight years, a process of real estate revaluation has been unleashed. Different agents in the tourism and financial real estate markets as well as companies in the so-called collaborative economy have begun to operate in the tourism rental market because of business opportunities and new acquisition strategies [2]. This process is bringing about definitive changes in the housing infrastructure of these neighborhoods, contributing to the reduction of the number of homes and displacing lowincome population groups in favor of residents with higher incomes. Namely, a process of elitization develops, as considered by authors such as Lees, Shin, and López-Morales, [3] who define gentrification as a social substitution in the urban space through which the population of an area or neighborhood is displaced and replaced by another one with higher purchasing power. In general, this is the result of the revaluation of the property prices and rents that exceed the residents' income.

Consequently, in these areas an initial stage of new construction and first cycle of use, with housing value rising, may be observed. In the second stage, the depreciation of the properties begins, partially and temporarily avoided by investment in rehabilitation or by changes in the market structure. If the process of loss of value continues, the decline is exacerbated by the sale or rent of properties to increasingly less wealthy social groups. This sometimes leads to a process of social substitution, including changes in the composition of the population by ethnicity or nationality, and precedes the gentrification dynamics, when optimal market conditions for a revaluation to begin are observed [4]. The change in market conditions might be favored by public action, the so-called state-led gentrification [5], or be a consequence of the acquisition strategies of real estate or financial market agents. In any case, this process takes place when market circumstances are such that the rehabilitated or renovated properties allow for a profit margin (rent gap) [6]. In the cases analyzed, tourism and gentrification are mutually reinforcing [7].
