The Professional Association of Self-Employed Autotaxis of Guía de Isora was constituted on 14th October 1978. It currently has 31 licences for public service vehicles, 3 of which are adapted for people with reduced mobility, the so-called PMR.

The current directors are:

• Mr. Ángel Hernández Alonso – President.
• Mr. Juan Antonio Torres González – Vice-president
• Mrs. Claudina Sanz Cruz – Secretary.

To talk about taxis in the south of Tenerife and specifically in Guía de Isora, and more specifically about taxi drivers, is to recognise first class witnesses who have lived and participated in the social, cultural and economic life of the municipality.

With a common origin throughout the south, especially from Granadilla to Santiago del Teide, it is also true that the growth of the different municipalities has kept pace with the growth of tourism. In this sense, Arona with Tenbel and Los Cristianos had a faster start. Adeje with the splendour of Playa de Las Américas and then the whole area of Costa Adeje has grown at the same pace. In this sense, and limiting ourselves to the municipality of Guía de Isora, it began to take off at the dawn of the 21st century.

In the 60s and 70s of the last century, there were three bus stops in Guía casco, Alcalá and Playa San Juan. Each one worked independently.

In the 80’s they worked with shift lists and services to Santa Cruz, called pasajes. Basically, they would go to medical appointments in the morning and carry out various errands, returning at midday.

In the 90’s, the first tourist outbreaks appeared and it was at the dawn of the 21st century that the definitive take-off began.

The association of Guía de Isora was a pioneer in the use of uniforms and with the incorporation of technological advances, a central office was created in the area of Varadero to distribute the services and later, with the implementation of the Auriga System, the services were unified in Arona, Guía and San Miguel, under the company Servitaxi Tenesur.

Returning to the historical moments, we can say that:

Each family of taxi drivers has a multitude of anecdotes and experiences that have taken place over the last 60 years. There is no specific publication relating to the municipality of Guía de Isora, but we extract some passages from the one entitled El acontecer del TAXI en ARONA by Marcos Brito, published in 2011, which gives an extensive history of all the professionals who have participated in the life of the taxi in the municipality of Arona and therefore we can translate it to the taxi drivers of Guía de Isora, given the neighbourhood and situations in many cases quite similar.

We extract the most relevant details from the aforementioned book, which can be summarised in the following paragraphs:

The roads and motorways in the south of Tenerife are, to put it familiarly, from the day before yesterday.

It was not until the middle of the 20th century and especially since the 60s and 70s that the capital and the neighbouring municipalities were connected. Until then, the main mode of transport had been coastal shipping, and in the early days it was the local cars or lorries that served as multi-purpose vehicles.

From the 1950s onwards, the old road to the south reached the municipality of Guía de Isora and at the end of the 1960s, the motorway to the south was built to connect the south with Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

In the mid 20’s of the 20th century, small multi-purpose lorries proliferated: transporting goods from the midlands to the coast, transporting workers or bringing staff to all kinds of festivities.

“The first public service car on the roads and tracks in the south of Tenerife. Adeje, Granadilla de Abona, Arona, Médano and Los Cristianos. Property of Mr. Luis González Barroso”.

It is known that there were unregistered vehicles moving people to errands and celebrations in the 30’s and 40’s, both neighbours and members of the town council or the board of education.

Licences to operate with auto-tourist cars, later renamed auto-taxi, began to be granted at the end of the 1950s.

It was in these years that the taxi ranks were born, at first in a completely artisanal manner, maintained by the drivers themselves. With the boom in tourism, with the development that followed the inauguration of the motorway, the population and the transit of passengers through the Port of Los Cristianos multiplied, with greater demand for services, and with the subsequent opening of the southern airport, the demand for day and night transport multiplied.

We highlight below, through graphic documentation, different important moments in the modern history of taxis in Guía de Isora.