The owner of the Maspalomas Lighthouse is the president of the Port Authority of Las Palmas, Beatriz Calzada, who, in the inertia of her predecessor, the Goth in his forms of Luis Ibarra, does not appear in the south of Gran Canaria even to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the beginning of the construction of this tourist reference point on the island with Fataga stonework and that ends in December 2024. It is one more example of the need of the people of the south of Gran Canaria to disconnect from the administrative capital of the island given that the economic capital of the Canary Islands is in Maspalomas. A colony within another colony in view of the lack of interest in cooperating with maritime culture from Las Palmas with the southern zone.
In the Canary Islands there are two symbols: Teide, an accident of geology, and the Maspalomas Lighthouse, a work of engineering, that is, of the talent of the Gran Canarians. The first is known to represent an entire island and the second is the contribution of the south of Gran Canaria as a driving force of the Canarian economy. Calzada has succeeded the Lanzarote native Luis Ibarra who, in the 11 years he was in this centre of power, when he came to the south of Gran Canaria it was to talk about Siam Park with the then PSOE mayor, Concepción Narváez.
Is there any property owned by the Port Authority of Las Palmas that bears the name of a school where the future of part of this island is being shaped? There is only one, and it is in the south of Gran Canaria. It is called IES Faro de Maspalomas. Among the lighthouses of the Port Authority of Las Palmas, the Faro de Maspalomas, which has been converted into an Ethnographic Centre, began to be developed in 1861, when a report from the Commission of Lighthouses on the maritime lighting complement of the Canary Islands was issued. Its purpose was to serve as a port of call for all the steamship lines from Africa and Oceania as well as from America, and also for the ships that fished in the fisheries of the coast of the African continent. For its construction, it was initially thought to use stone extracted from Monte Lentiscal or from the Barranco de San Roque in Telde, although finally an existing site in Fataga was chosen. The construction work was completed in 1889 with the installation of an optical device purchased in Paris.
