(Costa Tropical) The hoteliers have dug out an old term to put our section of the coast on the map, so to speak: Tropico de Europa. The problem with the term Costa Tropical is that many tourists immediately think of Central America, which is, admittedly, more logical.

It was back in 1928 when an Austrian gentleman; the pioneer of Andalusian tourism, coined the expression Costa del Sol, which back then referred  exclusively to the Costa de Almeria. Costa del Sol, for many years, became synonymous with the concept of Costa de Andalucia, until the Malagueños, bless them, nabbed the name to refer solely to the Costa de Malaga.

Then with plane loads of tourists arriving at Malaga airport, the Granadinos wanted a name to distinguish the Costa Granadina from the Malaga lot, so the strange term, Costa Tropical was coined. It’s a strange name because there is nothing tropical about the Costa Granadina; yes, sub-tropical fruit is grown here, but we certainly do not have a tropical climate. Admittedly, Costa Sub-Tropical doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, but at least it wouldn’t be a lie.

It was precisely because of the ‘tropical’ inaccuracy that when our tourism industry was trying to promote itself at international tourism fairs, more often than not, visitors to the stands would embarrassingly ask, “Costa Tropical – isn’t that in Costa Rica?” “No,” would be the  reply, “it’s inland from the tropical jungles of Granada, you hideous guiri!” One can only wonder how many tourists that were planning on holidaying in Central America ended up on the Costa Granadina and vice versa, right?

Anyway, this term, Tropico de Europa, certainly nails us down to Europe, so that’s something. The term was first coined in the 60’s and almost exclusively referred to Almuñécar, but between 79 and 83 it fizzled out, which was when the term Costa Tropical was born, referring to the whole of the Costa Granadina.

Without doubt, hoteliers have a better intuition for tourism than politicians, whose prime intuition is self-demolition in the eyes of the general public, but that would be a different article… The end result is that more and more hotels on the Costa Tropical are using the term Tropico de Europa to promote their establishments beyond our borders. They know that only by everyone pulling together, and injecting a spot of common sense into the municipal tourist boards, will our coast get anywhere with self promotion and to that end, the above terminology is being carried as a common banner.

And, just to do our bit, we have decided to rename the magazine, the Jungle Gazette…

(News, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)