Plans for harbour village closer to reality

Vueltas seen from the unfinished outer harbour

The regional government of the island of La Gomera has finally approved a revamp of the long-neglected harbour village of Vueltas in the south-western municipal area of Valle Gran Rey. While all other town centres on La Gomera have got a tidy-up with main thoroughfares made level, wheelchair friendly, and were traffic-calmed and smartened-up for all users with flowers and a more agreeable ambience, Valle Gran Rey with its central port of Vueltas however remained stuck in the concrete-laden 70's, forming an obstacle course for pedestrians making it almost impossible to negotiate with a pram or wheelchair. To this day there  are no bins, hardly any street lights and no greenery to speak of, while still maintaining the charm of the previous fishing village before the developers came.

One of the lanes of Vueltas

All this is about to change as the official announcement promises the redevelopment of 43.000 square metres of Vueltas with a traffic-calmed central road and plants, trees, benches and other amenities. The proposal was published in the official BOP document yesterday. The envisaged clean-up will cost 609.280 Euros and 38 Cents (how do they ever figure it out to the exact Cent, I wonder), and the duration of construction is to take eight months only.

Hooray, with a bit of luck finally we might move away from a sprawl lacking shade, ambience and basic facilities - forward to cleaner, greener, better times. Once the revamp is completed we might get a harbour area that can compete again with those in much less developed countries abroad. The natural charms are there, all it now needs is a clean-up that upgrades the village. See: The plans for Vueltas and: An overview of the Vueltas situation

Vueltas inner harbour and beach