"The European Miami": How Playa de las Américas Got Its Name
Playa de las Americas, formerly tomato fields, has been transformed into a popular resort in Tenerife thanks to a Catalan developer who sought to attract tourists.
Previously, until about 1960, south of Los Cristianos there were ordinary fields where tomatoes and spurge were grown, right up to the sea. And 20 years later, tourist companies such as Spies, Neckermann and Thomson began to call this place "European Miami" – Playa de las Américas.
This name was not taken from history or because of a special landscape. It was invented by a developer from Catalonia to better sell this volcanic land as the closest route to the "New World".
Until the 1960s, there were fields on the coast between Los Cristianos and the Del Rey ravine where tomatoes and prickly pears grew.
But everything changed in 1962, when entrepreneur Rafael Puig Lluvina from Catalonia bought 2.3 million square meters of land to build a large resort in the south of Tenerife.
He founded the company Playa de Las Américas S.A. and named his project the same – Playa de las Américas.
In the 1980s, when tourism began to develop actively, the name moved from tourist catalogs to official maps.
Today, it is a large development that stretches across two municipalities (Arona and Adeje) and receives more than 1.5 million tourists every year.