The old name for Europe’s most southerly ski
resort speaks for itself: ‘Solynieve - sun and snow,’ 2,100 metres
above sea level up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and just a two
hours’ drive from the sunny beaches of the Costa Tropical, on the coast
of Granada province, in Andalucía.
Now known simply as ‘Sierra Nevada,’ Cetursa, the company which manages
the resort tells us that the first historical reference to the
possibilities in this part of southern Spain was made at the end of the
19th century by the Granada essayist and novelist, Ángel Ganivet García.
He mentioned in his ‘Cartas Finlandesas – Letters from Finland’, a
series of essays written during the time he was Spanish Consul in
Helsinki, the idea of a friend of his, Diego Marín, to create an
‘Andaluz Switzerland in the Sierra Nevada.
Little-visited by the people of Granada up to this point, the Sierra
was by now gaining popularity as somewhere to be enjoyed: one group of
friends set up the association ‘Diez Amigos Limited’ and made their
first organised trip there in 1899. Originally-planned to limit its
members to just the ten friends, it became the ‘Sociedad Sierra Nevada’
in 1912, the third oldest skiing club in Spain.
The first skiing event – the National Sports Week – was held here in
1914, with more and people choosing to visit the area with the advent
of a new road in the 1920s, and the Granada City-Sierra Nevada electric
railway, which opened in February in 1925. It ran for almost 50 years
until it was dismantled in 1974.
National competitions were held there in the early 1940s, and the
International Sports Week was held annually between 1956 and 1966.
The company which now manages the ski station was born as Centros
Turísticos SA (Cetursa) in 1964, and the first important international
event to take place here was in 1975, when the Sierra Nevada hosted the
Ladies European Cup of Alpine Skiing, and many other events in the
coming years.
But it was from 1985 that it really began to develop as a resort, when
the Junta de Andalucía became the majority shareholder in Cetursa and
brought with them the investment needed to make the Sierra Nevada what
it is today.
It achieved worldwide prestige when the International Ski Federation
selected the resort to host the 1995 World Ski Championships. Although,
in the event, postponed until the following year, the Championship
consolidated the Sierra Nevada’s increasingly strong position in the
world of championship skiing.
Now with 87 pistes (the longest is almost 6 kms and the highest starts
at 3,300 m), two gondolas, 16 chair lifts, and two ski lifts, the
resort also offers night-skiing (introduced in 1994), 15 ski schools
and 400 instructors. 428 snow cannons ensure sufficient snow to make
skiing possible throughout what is usually a five-month season.
There is even a project on the cards, officially registered with the
Junta de Andalucía by a consortium of Granada businesses in September
2006, to build the longest cable car line in the world, across the 19
kms from Granada City to the Sierra Nevada ski resort.
Regards