Land-use and town-planning regulations were never a priority in the
described context. The Ley Sobre Re´gimen del Suelo y Ordenacio´n Urbana
(Law governing Land-Use and Urban Town-Planning) of 1956 came
to be seen as a hindrance to the longed for economic growth, and at
destinations it was practically impossible to reconcile the rationality of
town-planning with an unstoppable, spectacular process of urban and
tourism development. The local society, which generally depended on
a weak economic structure based on the primary sector, perceived the
urban growth associated with tourism as a source of wealth and prosperity.
The Ley de Centros o Zonas de Intere´s Turı´stico Nacional (Law of Centers
and Areas of National Tourist Interest) of 1963 subordinated townplanning
to tourism-related interests. Although the preamble of the
Law Act refers to the existence of such problems as saturation and
infrastructure shortages, its enforcement did not help to palliate those
very early structural imbalances. Just the opposite, it meant a sectorial
interference in town-planning that encouraged the growth in the
building sector without paying any attention whatsoever to its spatial
repercussions (De Tera´n 1982).