As one of the largest planned residential developments in Spain, El Canaveral is a part of the PAU plan put in place by the Spanish government to house low-income and working income residents who could not afford high rising prices within the city centers. Unlike many other Spanish developments that are half built then stopped by the economic crisis, El Canaveral spend an extremely long time sitting empty: devoid of both buildings and people. Streets were laid in the early 1997, however buildings did not began showing up until 2000.

       Designed by Arup, the project was initially very ambitious, planning to host both residential buildings and a shining CBD, where residents of the development would work. However, although El Canaveral is a public project, it suffered from a lack of funding and government support for many years, slowing development cycle to a crawl.  The construction phase was rocky to start, and the commercial buildings were quickly scrapped off the plans.

      It was not until 2015 that the first settlers began inhabiting the project.

       Today, large amounts of El Canaveral remains unbuilt, leaving large empty plots in its wake. The government and the developer quickly abandoned the project after the market crash, and only about a quarter of the original plan was built. The planned CBD is nowhere to be found, and the public spaces and landscape design is completely nonexistent.

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