*3.1. Santa Catalina-Canteras*

This neighborhood is located at the northern end of the isthmus of Guanarteme and sits on the tongue of sand that covers the lava flows from the Holocene volcanic cones of the peninsula of La Isleta, which connect it to the rest of the island of Gran Canaria (Figure 2).

**Figure 2.** Aerial perspective of Santa Catalina-Canteras. Source: Own elaboration.

It is a neighborhood delimited by the Las Canteras beach, to the west of the isthmus, and by the enclosure of the port of La Luz, to the east, the most important mid-Atlantic port and one of the Spanish ports with the most traffic [55].

The process of urbanization of this isthmus was delayed until the end of the 19th century, when the first dock began to be built, the Santa Catalina dock (1883) [56]. Around the same time, tourism specialization also began, since some local bourgeoisie and aristocratic owners began to erect summer homes, and other foreign investment initiatives, such as those in spas, were added. The occupation of the area was done through a procedure of expansion with an orthogonal grid adapted to low buildings.

Since the 1960s, there has been a proliferation of urban-tourist renovation projects that have led to a significant increase in the number of buildings. A large part of these new buildings corresponded to hotels and apartment complexes. Most of these establishments were erected without a parcellation process, resulting in a medium sized tourist structure. However, on other occasions, a re-parcellation process was carried out, promoted by large

companies, with the inauguration of large hotels in buildings of great volume or height (e.g., the "Hotel Don Juan", opened in 1968, with 26 floors, or the Hotel Cristina, with 14 floors and 28,000 m2, among others), to meet the demand of mass sun and beach tourism from Northern and Western Europe [6].

In the mid-seventies, the city had more than 33,000 beds [57], most of them located in the Santa Catalina-Las Canteras neighborhood. However, from that date on, the flow of tourists to the city began to lose importance in favor of the new destinations located in the south of the island [58,59]. As a result, some establishments, especially extra hoteliers, and hotels with lower status or further from the beach, were reconverted into residential or office buildings. This process of progressive loss of the tourist function continued for more than two decades, so that in 2001 the municipality had only 7700 beds.

Today, Santa Catalina-Canteras can be considered a hybrid neighborhood, which is structured around Las Canteras beach on its western side, and around the port facilities on the eastern side. Over the last two decades, public investment has focused on the growth and remodeling of public space for pedestrian use and the creation of port facilities for the reception of cruise ships. For its part, private investment has generated, in addition to new or rehabilitated properties for residential use, urban-tourist facilities of great centrality (El Muelle shopping centre, Poema del Mar Aquarium). Therefore, the neighborhood is currently a dynamic space in which residential, commercial, and tourist uses are concentrated and in which the existence of degraded areas, a legacy of past dynamics, can be recognized.
