When the tourists are in the ascendancy, it’s paradise lost

I PASSED through Los Cristianos in southern Tenerife last week on my way to my youngest son’s wedding on the island of La Gomera. 

Holidaymakers will be familiar with the town. I have known it since the 1980s, but it becomes less familiar on every visit. New streets turn old streets into alleyways. The church and town square have been dwarfed to toy-town proportions under high-rise apartment blocks.

When I first set foot there in 1981, Cristianos was still a small Canarian fishing village. Development was just beginning on the coast a few kilometres away, at what is now the huge resort of Playa Las Americas. A shortcut between them led across badlands where derelict saltpans held numerous seabirds. Within a few years, the salt ponds and the nearby desert were concreted over with motorways, apartment blocks and hotels.