10 Jun 2011

Puerto de Mogán, Past & Present

Published in Living in Gran Canaria
[gallery link="file" order="DESC" columns="5"] A beautiful fishing village carefully extended with new buildings that blend in perfectly with the old traditional Spanish style, a marina full of vibrant colours & walkways and a golden sandy beach. This is how you will picture Puerto de Mogán today but how many of you know about its past and what it looked like years ago? Until the 1980´s Puerto de Mogán was a sparsely populated fishing village. The people of Puerto de Mogán earned their livelihood from 2 main sources: fishing and agriculture but once the coastal road network reached Mogán the change began and with this the traditional agricultural and fishing activity started to be replaced by its current tourism activity. Rafael Neville, born in Malaga was the mastermind and main sponsor of what is now known as “Puerto de Mogán - The Little Venice of Canarias”, his intention was to build the best breathtaking urbanization in the Canary Islands and even though many believed that there would be no room for expansion either physically or economically he insisted and work commenced in 1983 finishing in 1988, the project required extensive land reclamation from the deep Atlantic Ocean and this is where the fishing harbour and marina area now lies. More recently constructed in 2004 is the hotel “Cordial”, a four star hotel distributed over a surface area of 48.000 square meters full of botanical gardens. The design of the hotel and its grounds fit in perfectly to maintain the delightful and peaceful atmosphere that Playa & Puerto de Mogán have become known for thus making it one of the most popular places to visit in the Canary Islands. Photo from 1965 from website http://www.fotosantiguascanarias.org/