**6. Conclusions**

The study of urban transformations and social changes linked to tourism cycles gains greater importance when faced from a comparative perspective. The neighborhoods of El Terreno in Palma (Mallorca) and Santa Catalina-Canteras in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Gran Canaria), located in the two most populous cities of their respective archipelagos, had a similar urban-tourist development until the end of the 20th century. They are neighborhoods that originally housed summer homes for owners of their respective cities and later became a hotel and residential area that accommodated foreign tourists, a specialization that increased from the 1950s until the 1980s, when their maturity as tourist neighborhoods was affected by a certain obsolescence.

Over the years, both spaces have maintained a complementary relationship with the rest of the urban neighborhoods, given that they have not only been places of leisure for visitors and tourists, but also for the enjoyment of the local population, as well as a place of permanent residence for a considerable number of residents. In the case of Santa Catalina-Canteras, the renovation actions undertaken since then have increased the residentialization of the neighborhood, giving it a certain tourist–residential hybridity. However, in El Terreno, there was a certain differentiation of uses between a higher and more distant area from the coast of a residential nature, more degraded, and the coastal area, with a residential and tourist function, both of higher quality.

During the first three lustrums of this century, both in Santa Catalina-Canteras and in El Terreno (especially in its upper area), the most deteriorated properties that had been withdrawn from the tourist accommodation offer were put on the rental market, with many workers with scarce resources agreeing to rent them, mostly labor immigrants from non-EU countries. Therefore, these neighborhoods have contributed to the development of the consolidated city, both from an urban, housing, and economic point of view. However, they have been integrated into it with a particular idiosyncrasy, as tourists, labor immigrants, lifestyle immigrants, and residents of different origins have shared the leisure space represented by its beaches and surroundings and have participated in the dynamism of its tourist and tourist–residential economy.

Since 2014, the demographic and economic dynamics of the two neighborhoods in this study have diverged. In the first case, Santa Catalina-Canteras, the revaluation of the neighborhood for tourist use has caused a demographic loss, while in the second, El Terreno, its residential strength has been recovered, attracting foreigners with high purchasing power. At the same time, in Santa Catalina-Canteras, the revaluation of tourism has meant an increase in rents and purchase prices and, indirectly, has increased the income levels of the population. Thus, the process of gentrification has led to neighborhood protests, who consider that the investment in the refurbishment of properties for rent as holiday homes is contributing to the expulsion of residents, a type of reaction that has not occurred in the rest of the city's neighborhoods.

In the case of El Terreno, an influential real estate sector has been consolidated, as well as a residential sector linked to a high economic level population, which has meant that the average gross income of this urban sector is among the highest in Palma. Unlike other neighborhoods in the capital of Mallorca, the first gentrification dynamics have not, for the moment, produced a high level of neighborhood protest. They are probably not yet very visible to the public, but they are irreversible. The gentrification in El Terreno is part of an expansive wave that first affected the historic center and later the neighboring districts of Santa Catalina and Espanyolet. It is a process that, like an oil stain, has been spreading to potentially profitable areas of the city for real estate investment.

In short, the two mature tourist districts, in the island cities of Palma and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, offer divergent trajectories in this phase of late capitalism. In both, we witness a certain social elitization in a context of revaluation, after a phase of loss of value, according to the model of life cycle of the neighborhoods, but in Santa Catalina-Canteras, this occurs in a context of tourist rejuvenation and in El Terreno, of decline, according to the model of life cycle of the destinations. In conclusion, the productive reorganization, and the search for new capital gains result in a process of gentrification, either predominantly tourist, in the case of Santa Catalina-Canteras, or residential, in the case of El Terreno, conditioning their functional specialization and promoting social inequality.

At the time of writing, it is difficult to predict what the future trends will be in these urban-tourist areas, as the pandemic has considerably reduced the flow of tourists and labor migrants, contracted investment in tourist rehabilitation, and led to a decrease in real estate transactions and a fall in house prices. However, it is likely that the hybrid character of these areas will favor an earlier recovery than that which will characterize other tourist enclaves on the coast, outside the big cities.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, methodology, investigation, resources, writing, and review and editing: J.D.-M., J.M.P.-C., J.M.G.-P. and D.S.-A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the projects: "Housing and international mobility in cities of the Canary Islands. The emergence of new forms of urban inequality" (RTI2018-093296-B-C21) and "Housing and International Mobility in the Cities of the Balearic Islands. The Emergence of New Forms of Urban Inequality" (RTI2018-093296-B-C22), financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades—Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities—State Research Agency (AEI).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The study did not require ethical approval.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Raw data are publicly available.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**

