The Past was a different place...by Sheila Claydon

Hello from Tenerife.
While the UK suffers from low temperatures and biting winds I’m spending time in the sunny Canary Islands where a cloudy day is an event to be commented upon.  In the past I’ve always thought of the islands as a place to truly relax and recharge one’s batteries but my goodness how things have changed. When I first visited this part of the Tenerife coast, more than 25 years ago, it was a tiny fishing village with a couple of weathered shacks on the dusty road opposite the shingle beach. Sitting on rickety chairs we enjoyed meals of grilled squid and salty Canarian potatoes or a paella full of mussels and prawns, all washed down with a light wine or, more often, with Sangria, the true flavour of  these islands. In front of us would be upturned boats spread with drying fishing nets, while across from us sunburned fishermen would smoke and drink before taking to the seas again.

We reached the village by climbing up and over a long hill of scrub interspersed with spiny cacti and tiny pink flowers whose name I never learned, and by the time we sank gratefully into those rickety chairs our sandals would be thick with the yellow dust of the roadside. Now, to get there, we have to drive on smooth black roads through a convoluted mass of one way systems, roundabouts and traffic signals and then circle endlessly looking for somewhere to park our car. There isn’t a single space in the row upon row of parked cars at every kerbside but we eventually find an underground carpark. It leads up into a mall full of shops with the designer names that can be seen in every town, city and airport in most parts of the world.

Eventually we find the sea and the imported yellow sands that now cover the small expanse of shingle from yesteryear and spread out far beyond it. The weathered shacks have long gone of course, and in their place is a long promenade lined with every sort of eaterie, each offering a plethora of choices. Tapas, steak and fries, pizza, full English breakfast, pasta, hot dogs, beef burgers, ice cream, pastries, beer , wine.....food and drink from many cultures and to suit many tastes. Only the sangria remains a constant. And the sunhats we buy from a stall run by a smiling islander have the inevitable ‘made in China’ label.

When we finally choose a place to eat it isn’t so bad. Our table is on a sheltered terrace with a view of the sea and here they still serve grilled squid although not as we remember it. Less succulent with few vegetables it is nevertheless a taste from the past as are the tiny wrinkled potatoes. There is nothing else left of the past though, and as we look up at the hotels and holiday apartments rising in tier upon tier above us up the steep cliffs of the island, we wonder. Is this the price of success...people crowded out of their own villages as more and more tourists fly to the sunshine. We have met people from Germany, France, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland,  Belgium, Ireland,Wales, Scotland, every part of England, Australia, Vietnam and America, all in the space of a few days, on a tiny rock of an islaand 600 miles off the coast of Morocco.  It’s enough to make the head whirl!

Is it a good thing, this development of sun soaked islands for the mass of tourists who want the sun?Is it right that a tiny, barely inhabited village has been turned into a centre of holiday hedonism?Who am I to say because, while I far prefer the tiny village and the roadside shack, maybe the residents don’t. They may well feel that with tourism making more than a 60% contribution to the island’s economy it’s a change worth making. I certainly hope so.

Before Books We Love began to publish my books I wrote another one that was based in Tenerife...a Tenerife halfway between what it once was and what it is now. It was my first attempt at writing about places I’d visited and it’s success led me to do it again, and again. Reluctant Date is one of those books, set in a tiny Key in the Gulf of Mexico, one of my favourite places in all the world, and one I’m afraid to visit again in case it too has changed.