The fate of Santa Águeda is no longer written solely in the courts, but also in the offices of multinational corporations and high-end notaries. What As Maspalomas24H predicted in 2023, it is now confirmed as the script for an unprecedented economic transition: the land where Franco imposed the concrete that built the Canary Islands for 70 years is one step away from becoming the next epicenter of luxury tourismThe staff would go to the new business, and the subcontractors would have to find useful clients in other areas, like everything else in life. The blackmail is over: now it's just a matter of resisting. In 2024, Fernando Clavijo, president of the Canary Islands, confirmed that a luxury hotel would be built on that plot of land..
The news isn't just the dismantling, but the gentleman's agreement emerging from the dust. Masaveu and Votorantim, the giants behind CEISA, don't deny the obvious: the future of their land in southern Gran Canaria already has the scent of orange blossom and the sea air of a boutique hotel. The strategy is purely geographical. While the Canary Islands Government (CC and PP) continues its struggle to clear the Santa Águeda dock, the Port Authority of Las Palmas has made its move on the regional chessboard. The concession of 6.000 square meters in Puerto del Rosario (Fuerteventura) to CEISA is the key piece of the puzzle.
This move guarantees the cement company a supply and production route on Fuerteventura by 2027, providing the "honorable exit" that Fernando Clavijo's administration sought. In exchange for abandoning the Gran Canaria dock—attacked by major investors such as former footballer David Silva, the Cordial chain, and the Del Castillo family—the multinational secures its operations in the archipelago.
The backdrop to this operation is one of the most significant real estate deals of the decade. By changing the land use from industrial to tourist, the value of CEISA's property in Santa Águeda has skyrocketed. Prestigious brands like Hospes and Iberostar are already eyeing the project. Masaveu already has hotel agreements with Iberostar.
After decades of mining activity, the owners could sell the land at a record-high price to the same investors who are now pressuring for their departure. However, the path to the first hotel check-in is fraught with legal contradictions. While this exodus to Fuerteventura is being negotiated, CEISA is maintaining its legal offensive in Gran Canaria, requesting precautionary measures to prevent an immediate demolition that they denounce as "inexplicable recklessness."
CEISA warns that dismantling the port before the new Fuerteventura terminal is operational would create a logistical bottleneck and an additional environmental cost of 3.000 tons of CO2 annually due to truck transport. And so, while some count sacks of cement and others count hotel stars, the land of Santa Águeda waits, patient as only that which was stone before it became a factory can wait, knowing that in the end, people always exchange one landscape for another, and that where yesterday there was the noise of windmills and gray dust, tomorrow there will be a pool-like silence and a breeze that will no longer smell of industry, but of that new money that arrives with the tide to erase the traces of those who, for seventy years, believed that concrete was eternal.
Fernando Masaveu 
