Playa Honda, Lanzarote’s fourth-largest town, is seeing big changes, and even more are planned.
Originally a few houses built by wealthy families, Playa Honda expanded, first with the arrival of the airport in the 1940s and then along with the development of tourism. Today, it has almost 11,000 residents.
A stroll down Playa Honda’s main street, Calle Mayor, on a weekend morning, gives an idea of who those residents are. You’ll see plenty of younger people, many of whom work in Arrecife or Puerto del Carmen; groups of nurses and teachers meeting up for coffee and a chat; families with prams and pushchairs, and middle-aged and retired people enjoying the atmosphere. You’ll hear Spanish spoken in accents from Canarian to Colombian, as well as English, German and Italian, and a relaxed, easy atmosphere.
On weekdays, however, that tranquil atmosphere is disturbed, not only by the sound of planes taking off (which Playa Honda residents are well used to) but by the incessant sound of drilling which has been going on all summer. This is the result of a new project to renovate the Plaza de Santa Elena, the pretty tree-lined square at the foot of the street.
In June, those trees were uprooted and removed, and diggers began to excavate a huge pit that will be an 110-space underground car park. The square above will eventually be replaced, with new trees, a play area and a three-story building that will contain a library, as well as space for the elderly and cultural activities.
However, the removal of the trees caused anger and sorrow among local residents, and the ongoing works – at over €6 million, the most expensive project ever taken on by San Bartolomé’s council – remain controversial.
Some of the trees that were removed from the plaza were transplanted to the recently opened Parque Urbano de Playa Honda (although some appear not to have survived the move). This park is another ambitious project that has recently been completed at a cost of over €3 million. Constructed on reclaimed waste land between the football pitch and the airport, behind Calle Mástil, the park represents several volcanic craters, containing a children’s play areas, an adult fitness zone, a skate park, kiosks and other leisure areas.
At the northern end, the “wind trees” – large structures with scores of small green windmills shimmer and whir in the breeze. The park is undeniably impressive, but on two morning visits we barely saw anyone actually using it.
Traffic flow
Playa Honda’s beaches and attractive seafront promenade are another attraction, although the prohibition of cyclists from the prom has been controversial ever since it was imposed during the pandemic. But the town’s biggest attractions for islanders remain the Deiland shopping Centre and the industrial zone on the other side of the LZ-2 main road.
Opened in 1998, Deiland attracts several hundred cars every day, and most of them come from the direction of Arrecife. The resulting congestion on the notorious Playa Honda double roundabout led to the construction of an underpass that filtered this traffic off through another underpass.
Recently completed, the underpass seems to be doing its job well, and pedestrians and cyclists have much more space to access the industrial zone. However, since the opening of the underpass, traffic returning from Deiland to Puerto del Carmen and the south of the island has had to use Calle Chimidas, a narrow residential street with several zebra crossing, crossroads and a 20 kph speed limit. Christmas could highlight the dangers and shortcomings of this solution.
Even then, the underpass is regarded as only a temporary solution. The Canarian Government now has plans for a much larger project which will shift the main road connecting the airport with Arrecife north of the existing industrial zone.
This solution was chosen despite widespread support for a more expensive project that would relocate traffic on the existing LZ-2 underground.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!