Starting this May 1, El Muelle, the shopping center serving the port of Las Palmas, wins the Sunday and holiday game. The map of Sunday consumption in the capital of Gran Canaria maintains a strategic fracture marked by the port calendar resulting from the lobbying initiated by Las Arenas in 2014 when Francisca Luengo was the Commerce Councillor of the Government of the Canary Islands. The fact is that no matter how much El Muelle has invested, it always ends up limping due to interest groups that do not want to compete fairly but through the BOC. This is a burden for entrepreneurs and liquidity-holding funds.
The regulations arising from less than honest pressures, to put it mildly, generated illogical outcomes that limited the Tourist High Affluence Zone (ZGAT) to the El Rincón area. It establishes a temporary protection that prevents the Las Arenas Shopping Center from competing in holiday openings during the summer months. Meanwhile, the El Muelle Shopping Center, located in the Puerto-Canteras area, enjoys an exception that allows it to operate continuously, while its rival at the extreme west of the city must wait for the official start of the cruise high season.
The administrative resolution governing the El Rincón area, where the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium and Las Arenas are located, restricts the freedom of opening exclusively to the period from October 1 to April 30 of the following year. This limitation responds to reports from the Port Authority of Las Palmas, which link the significant influx of visitors to the flow of large passenger ships. Outside this interval, activity in Guanarteme returns to the general regime, leaving the Sunday commerce monopoly of large surfaces in the hands of establishments located in the direct influence area of the cruise dock.
The Port as a Refuge for Summer Consumption
The validity of this order represents an operational relief for the Puerto-Canteras area, which manages to rid itself of the competition from Las Arenas during the May to September semester. The El Muelle Shopping Center thus capitalizes on the flow of residents and tourists passing through the isthmus, becoming the only large-format option open on holidays in the urban environment. This temporal duality has historically been questioned by business organizations such as Cecapyme and Fedeco, both failed employers, who warned in 2014 about changes in population flows and the negative impact that the opening of large establishments has on local small businesses in other neighborhoods.
The regional government justified Las Arenas’ access to El Muelle’s business based on the proximity to the port areas and the utilization of the more than half a million cruise passengers received by the city annually. The need to adapt commercial offer hours for cruise visitors necessitated enhancing tourist interest sites, but the strict application of the calendar leaves the El Rincón area in a waiting position. Until the docking schedule resumes in October, the commercial axis of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria will maintain its center of gravity shifted towards the Santa Catalina dock.
