The GC-500 highway is a work product of Canarian development that has made it possible to structure tourism in Gran Canaria. It was the prelude to the GC1 highway, which begins in Las Palmas and ends in Mogán. The GC1 has an accumulated traffic of 80.000 vehicles from Salinetas to Maspalomas. The south of the island, therefore, is home to the closest highway to Africa in all of Europe.
The Franco ministers José María Fernández-Ladreda and Menéndez-Valdés, the count of San Pedro; Fernando Suárez de Tangil y Angulo, Count of Vallellano in the 50s and in the 70s the minister and founder of Alianza Popular, took the first steps due to the imperative needs of the south of Gran Canaria in generating foreign currency for Spain. Added to this was Federico Silva Muñoz, key to ensuring that the south of Gran Canaria has this work through which employment in Gran Canaria circulates together with Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora y Mon and the technocratic minister Antonio Valdés González-Roldán under the Carrero's orders gave the first State budgetary impulses to the GC-500.
The GC-1 arises due to the saturation of the GC-100, which reached the south of Gran Canaria along the coast after passing through Telde, Ingenio, Agüimes and Santa Lucía de Tirajana on a single road in each direction. The General Southern Highway, that is, the current GC-500 and GC-191, connected Tirajana with Mogán, crossing the urban centers of Carrizal, Cruce de Arinaga and Vecindario.
After the 1970s, due to the growth of Vecindario and tourism, the GC1 created a link between the Gando Airport and the El Berriel Aerodrome. The first section would consist of splitting the road built in the 1960s, while for the second two new roads would have to be built, with two lanes in each direction, that would circumvent the Arinaga Crossing and Vecindario. The first section was inaugurated in 1975, while the second would not be inaugurated until 1980. In 1986, it was approved to unfold the GC-500 highway from Bahía Feliz to El Tablero, but in 1987 the highway from San Agustín to Pasito Blanco was planned. The work opened in 1990 and in 1993 the section to Santa Águeda was completed.
