Economy
Alicante is one of the fastest-growing cities in Spain. The local economy is based upon tourism directed to the beaches of the Costa Blanca and particularly the second residence construction boom which started in the 1960s and reinvigorated again by the late 1990s. Services and public administration also play a major role in the city's economy. The construction boom has raised many environmental concerns and both the local autonomous government and city council are under scrutiny by the European Union. The construction surge is the subject of hot debates among politicians and citizens alike. The latest of many public battles concerns the plans of the Port Authority of Alicante to construct an industrial estate on reclaimed land in front of the city's coastal strip, in breach of local, national and European regulations. (See Port of Alicante for the details).
The city is the headquarters of the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market and a sizeable population of European public workers live here.
The campus of the University of Alicante is located in San Vicente del Raspeig, bordering the city of Alicante to the north. More than 27,000 students attend the University.
Since 2005 Alicante has been home to Ciudad de la Luz, one of the largest film studios in Europe. Spanish and international movies such as Asterix at the Olympic Games by Frédéric Forestier and Thomas Langmann, Manolete by Menno Meyjes have been shot there.
Read more about this topic: Alicante
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)