It was 1999 when María Eugenia Márquez was Territorial Policy Advisor of the Government of the Canary Islands when she signed the defense plan for the Maspalomas Dunes. 25 years have passed and the residents of the south of the island protect them but unscrupulous tourists and people who come from Las Palmas to the south ruin them. It has also become a cancaneo zone and there are hardly any human resources to monitor this space in which companies from Las Palmas have swollen up to sell consulting reports and special programs that have only served to justify the smoke.
The first steps to protect this environment were in 1975 when the owners contacted the Cabildo of Gran Canaria to establish the means through which the dune area could be declared a Natural Park. In 1980, a bill was presented to the Congress of Deputies for the declaration of the Maspalomas Dunes as a Natural Park, a proposal that was not accepted due to formal defects. In 1981, the XI Regional Inspection of ICONA prepared a project for the declaration of the Maspalomas Dunes area as a Natural Site of National Interest, occupying an area of 328 hectares.
In 1982, in the Official State Gazette on a day in the month of July, the Royal Decree was published by which provisional protection of the Maspalomas Dunes was established, which provides for the creation of a Board or Board of Trustees whose purpose is to propose and study the necessary measures to safeguard and conserve this area.
In July 1983, the Board of Provisional Protection of the Dunes of Maspalomas provided as a protection measure the preparation of a proposed Bill for the declaration of a Natural Site of National Interest to the set of ecosystems formed by the dune field, pond and oasis of Maspalomas, going 200 meters into the sea as a measure to protect the natural sand base and possible spills in the area, as well as the marine flora and fauna. This proposal was based on the report that a commission of technicians prepared at the request of said Board of Trustees in March of the same year, for the expansion of the provisional limits of the Dunas de Maspalomas natural space. 418 hectares are protected. Law 12/1994 on Natural Spaces of the Canary Islands gave the Maspalomas Dunes Natural Area the status of Special Natural Reserve.
