If you look back a few decades, few in the whole of what we call history, something more than 26,000 people They lived in what is today the most populous municipality in the South Shire. More or less the population they now have tacoronte either Icod of the Winesin the north of Tenerife.
His neighbors were not far behind either. adeje it had little more than 13,600 souls; Abona granadillawith 17,321 and Saint Michael of Abona5,722 inhabitants.
The mayors: Miguel Delgado (ATI-MEI) in Arona, who would remove a total of seven councilors out of 21 in 1999; Miguel Rodríguez Fraga (PSOE) in Adeje, who a year later would expand his majority to 14 of 17 councilors; Jaime González Cejas (PSOE) in Granadilla de Abona, with 11 of 17 councilors and Claudio Delgado (CC) in San Miguel, who would not be a candidate in 1999, when the Canary Islands Coalition obtained its first absolute majority.
Twenty-five years later, that South and that Arona have nothing to do with the current one. The region has more than 206,000 inhabitants, a true metropolitan area compared to the almost 63,000 residents in 1998.
The Santa Cruz-La Laguna axis, including El Rosario and Tegueste, have many more: 395,000. But its growth in this time has not reached 10%, which is still a convincing percentage in a space as limited as that of an Island. However, that of the South has been 228%.
At the same rate, one assumes, in the next 25 years the Region would go for half a million inhabitants, as long as the territory and the ecosystem were capable of supporting it, as it has been in the last two and a half decades.
In any case, the reality is that DIARIO DE AVISOS headlined in 2019 that Arona opened the year with its first 100,000 residents. Four years later, the municipality has picked up a run until reaching 110,000, a dizzying figure that reflects on paper which is the municipality of the South capital.
Therefore, it is consolidated as the third in population in Tenerife and fifth in the Canary Islands, only behind Telde, in Gran Canaria.
Arona, 110,000 inhabitants with a mayoress, Fátima Lemes, who belongs to the PP and who governs with five of the 21 councilors of the corporation.
However, if the figure of 110,000 were to go from the municipal register of the City Council to the official figures of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), which traditionally lags behind the municipalities, the next elections the number of mayors to choose would be as many as those who La Laguna has, going from the current 25 to a total of 27 and the absolute majority would be fourteen.
Undoubtedly, opportunities and job creation have pushed the arrival of new neighbors.
It must be taken into account that the unemployment rate in Arona has fallen so much that it has reached levels similar to those prior to the 2008 economic crisis.
Despite the increase in the active population (that is, those who enter the market looking for work), the number of people without a job is slightly above 14%. Santa Cruz de Tenerife, by comparison, is at 20.6% in terms of unemployment rate.
The municipality contributes more than it receives from public coffers
As Personal Income Tax (IRPF), Arona contributed 64.2 million euros to the public coffers, which makes this municipality highly profitable, since the figure received directly by the different Administrations it was barely half that amount
