THE TOURIST POTENTIAL

THE COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURES

The pioneers of the Costa del Sol, those who with their efforts and enthusiasm built this emporium stone by stone and which today is the first peninsular tourist area, remember with nostalgia and hope when in the 60’s, the first bus loads of tourists had to manoeuvre to get round the dangerous curves of the coastal roads at the height of Torrequebrada, and in Torremolinos to make a phone call you had to wait two or three hours for the switchboard to have a free line with the exterior.

These two anecdotes of the recent past illustrate the large quantitative and qualitative jump which the Costa del Sol has experienced in the last two decades, but especially in the last lustrum, which is when the area and the province of Malaga have managed to acquire a modern infrastructure, which is the fruit of the tourist process which generated the need for buildings and services, and on the other hand, as a motor in the economic development which multiplied these needs. It is said with reason, that the tourist growth was so sudden and spectacular that it left the previous researches over the population increase and other factors to foresee the futures needs out of date. Practically none of the travel guides in the last decade make reference to the communications infrastructures which in those days were clearly insufficient to accompany the tourist and internal development of the authoctonous population, although in political, business, and professional mediums, continuous big bangs were made in order to enlarge and modernise the basic transport systems by land, sea, and air, the key elements for encouraging any development.

Therefore, the different levels of the Administration dedicated their effort and large budgets to modernising and creating new routes for national and foreign tourism to enter. It was a case of breaking with the old dichotomy that the Costa del Sol as a tourist product didn’t have the advantages of an island but it did have the inconvenience of being isolated and only having one moderately acceptable accessway by air.

The successive road plans designed by the Ministry of Public Works in the 80’s and beginnings of the 90’s have formed a quite different panorama to the one which existed only a few years ago. The enormous effort invested, as much in works already done as ones which are being done or projected, has formed a new panorama of moderness which for the last three years, the Provincial Board of Tourism on the Costa del Sol has been working on so that the whole tourist world should know this.

Among the infrastructures which have contributed to substantially improve the Costa del Sol, to the extent that since 1992 it can be called the "new Costa del Sol", there are the motorways, ring roads and accesses, the port in Malaga, the airport, promenades and the Technological Park of Andalucía in the municipality of Malaga.

In the roads plan there is a basic reference to the construction of the Andalusia highway (Autovía), the A-92, as a transverse axis which vertebrates the Autonomous Community and acts as a route which has brought the Costa del Sol nearer to the rest of Andalusia, Spain and Europe through the national highways and motorways network. It is a construction which has allowed and facilitated the permeability of the Malaga coast for an eminently national tourism who before found it difficult to get here comfortably and rapidly, and at the same time it has opened new communications prospects by road to the enormous potential of European travellers who use their car for holidays and other rest periods.

Once the access from the exterior was facilitated, the rest of the communications routes was completed with a programme of new roads on the coastal border and in other areas of the province, acting as a comb which gives access to the coast or being able to go inland faster and securely. Thus, there is the total reconversion of the old National Road 340 into a dual carriageway with a median strip and bridges or subways to avoid dangerous left turns, as well as wider footpaths and many bridges and access to urbanizations and urban nuclei. At the moment, Public Works has the conversion of the same road to passing the western Costa del Sol, in the process of a public tender, and they expect that in two or three years the communications by motorway should be finished on the whole coast.

Following this first construction was the west circle road with access to Malaga and the construction of a new bridge over the Guadalhorce. Later, the east circle road, also with access from Malaga, with a total of 11 kilometres, plus another four branches and very showy viaducts, completing the ring on the east so that one can have access from one area to another of the Costa del Sol without having to enter the capital.

If the construction of the two ring roads circling Malaga was important, perhaps even more so the dividing of the Antequera-Málaga road, converting a total of 42 kilometres into a highway. Leaving aside the great work of engineering involved with the extension of the tunnels and the thirty-odd bridges which overcome the windy Guadalmedina river, this work has eliminated the constant traffic jams on the main access to the Costa del Sol on the north and the connection with the two ring roads already mentioned.

The access via highway from Malaga to the Technological park, whose realisation corresponds to the Junta de Andalucía, forms part of a new road with 69 kilometres which connects Ardales and Sierra de Yeguas with the A-92.The Junta is also building and improving different regional roads to form the so-called Vélez-Marbella Archway inland. The Vélez-Málaga - La Viñuela sector has been in service for two years and is one of the six stretches belonging to the regional connection project. The council, on its part has exceedingly contributed in improving the inland routes which allow a better access between regions, and also to the coast.

The tangible reality are the three ring roads in Benalmádena, Marbella, and Estepona, as well as the Malaga-La Colina highway in Torremolinos. These four large constructions have supposed a new concept between distances on the Costa del Sol, cutting journeys between some points and others in a considerable way, but above all, gaining in road security.

Air Terminal "Pablo Ruiz Picasso". Deserving a special mention is the construction of the new building terminal of the International Airport of Malaga, which the airport authorities AENA have baptised with the Malaga contemporary painting genius, Pablo Ruiz Picasso. The new airport which was inaugurated in December 1991 covers a large check-in and arrivals hall for domestic flights, which now include, since a few months ago, flights between countries of the European Union who signed the Schengen treaty, and a special treatment for passport control for those who didn’t join. It consists of a majestic space, distributed between three floors from the surface an a basement level for exclusive internal use to attend to the flight operations, which occupies an extent of 180.000 m², doubling the area it had before, and guarantees the operating capacity of 12 million passengers, double the amount who were registered at the end of 1995.

But the construction of the new airport also included a new aircraft parking platform which allows the simultaneous operation of up to 14 large aeroplanes to which passengers can have direct access from the waiting rooms on the second floor by means of the articulated arms which are attached to the aeroplane’s fuselage.

A large parking on various levels for cars and another exterior parking with a capacity for 70 buses, plus the urbanization and exterior gardens, all form a harmonious complex which is integrated in the architectural neo-classic concept designed by the architectural workshop of Ricardo Bofill.

To the terminal building, next to the one which used to receive the international flights, and which, since the Schengen agreement came into effect has gone back to dedicating a large part of the remodelled and modernised space to this traffic, there has been a later addition of new investments to improve the systems of air navigation and the installations to make them more operative, while new projects for the extension of additional installations continue to develop, such as the construction of a new control tower which will become the emblem or symbol of this modern airport which is situated among the four best in Spain and qualified by the EU among the ones of most category.

Sea Port. Although the political and citizen debate regarding the future of the Sea Port in Malaga continues, the port authorities have just presented the public opinion with a project designed by a group of architects, town planners, and engineers for a new form of its installations and commercial use. On general, concerning the tourist sector, understanding this as an activity the port contributes in promoting and as a generator for cruiser tourism, the project of a new form which will be done after over 100 years will suppose a public investment of over 40.000 million pesetas in the next years and includes a series of acts, especially in the docks 1 and 2 for tourist-sport use, leaving 1.000 metres for cruiser berths and large parking areas near the main entrance by the Marina square, as well as a series of hotel, commerce, and leisure equippings in the open spaces which adjoin with the La Farola promenade. In the last few years, the cruiser activities has been growing gradually, exceeding the amount of cruiser ships which docked each year.

Railway Transport. The railway connections with the exterior of the province of Malaga, until now, have not been considered to be decisive for tourist activity, but as they have notably improved in frequency and length of the journeys, especially in Madrid with the introduction of the Talgo train with the last generation technology which uses the route of AVE (Alta Velocidad Española) Spanish High Speed from Cordoba, one could say that its tourist importance has grown. The same occurs with the short distance trains which join, in a shuttle way, the capital with the localities of Torremolinos, Benalmádena, and Fuengirola, with diverse stations each which adds up to 25 stations including Malaga city. A railway line which is the one with the most quality in Spain, as much for the user’s opinion as for the rate of punctuality it has reached all year round, and at the same time one which transports the most passengers, the figure of which ascended to 7,3 million in 1994, almost 300,000 more people than in 1993. From the total quantity, a high percentage of travellers corresponds to foreign tourists and a less amount of national tourists.

These circumstances have brought about that the national company of railways, Renfe, has made diverse improvement plans of the central station in Malaga and other stations already mentioned, and at the same time has modernised the short distance services with a constant renewal of the technical unit, putting new carriages into service, which are air-conditioned and much more comfortable.

Finally, it is enough to say that the long distance trajectory most used by travellers, the Malaga-Madrid-Malaga, which transported 434.300 passengers in the Talgo-200 trains in 1994, with a growth of 24,2% over 1993, has been cut down considerably as the Talgo train now uses the AVE rail, reducing the time of 8 hours which the conventional trains used to take, to 4 hours and 40 minutes with the same route. A fact which illustrates the quality of the Talgo service: the punctuality reached in 1994 was of 98%, whereas the occupation was of 78,4%.