Hotel resorts in the canary islands: creating a vernacular city on the insular landscape. Heritage distortion, aesthetical fiction of atlanticity or tourist attraction

Abstract

T his paper analyses the architecture and urbanism of new touristic areas in The Canary Islands, Spain, and its particular integration into the insular landscape. The current use of At lantic vernacular regionalisms as the main stylistic resources for seaside resorts, transmit a false identity of the new coastal landscape, principally at Tenerife and Gran Canaria. At the same time, it promotes an important historical distortion of the notion of heritage in the whole archipelago. This new aesthetic, based on the mimesis and plagiarism of the most important typologies of the Canarian heritage, has extremely disturbed the contemporary landscape perception of these Atlantic Islands, through a process that can be considered unique in the regions of the Atlantic Ocean