San Bartolomé de Tirajana
Gran Canaria resort municipality with 54,116 residents and one of the island’s largest tourist-bed inventories.
Last refreshed: 18 July 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
How does a town of 54,000 residents plan public services for one of an island's busiest resort zones?
Timeline for San Bartolomé de Tirajana
Cleared the bed-to-resident thresholds triggering binding duties
Nomads & Communities: Canaries make tourist towns a legal tierBackground
San Bartolomé de Tirajana, on Gran Canaria's southern coast, is named directly in The Canary Islands' new tourist-municipality law as a town that clears the bed-to-resident thresholds comfortably, pending formal regional verification.
The municipality had 54,116 residents as of January 2024 (INE), yet its bed stock puts it among the island's highest tourist-bed concentrations. Its resort area includes Maspalomas, with its dunes Nature reserve, and Playa del Inglés, two of Gran Canaria's best-known tourism draws.
That gap between resident population and visitor infrastructure is precisely what the new law targets. Once classified, San Bartolomé de Tirajana inherits statutory planning, sustainable-mobility and public-service duties funded against the scale of tourism it hosts rather than the number of people who live there.