The Arona borough is located on the southern part of the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The borough covers an area of 81.79 square kilometres comprising 4% of the island's area and is 81km from Santa Cruz de Tenerife (City), the island's capital. The population of the borough in 1996 was 28,208 and has grown rapidly in recent years due to the growth of a tourist industry and was one of the fastest between 2000 and 2002 in the Canary Islands. The metropolitan area is about 120,000 with Adeje and San Miguel de Abona. Arona has a pleasant climate with temperatures ranging from 20 to 25 degrees celsius. Notable parts of the borough include the tourist resorts of Los Cristianos, Playa de las Americas, Costa del Silencio and Las Galletas. Arona also features Punta Salemas, the southernmost point on the island of Tenerife.
Arona is accessed with the superhighway to the south with the TF1 Motorway linking Adeje and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The superhighway was first linked in the 1990s. The old highway runs within the coastline. The farmlands once covered most of Arona now covers the area around Arona. The mountains lie to the north.
The area was sparsely populated in the initial centuries since the settlement of the island. While Viera y Clavijo mentioned a small village of the same name in an early work on the islands, a church was not built until the 17th century and this church did not obtain the status of a parish church until March 1796. |
