Without doubts, Old San Juan is the most emblematic historical center of Puerto Rico.
In Old San Juan buildings from the 16th to 21st centuries coexist, not precisely in harmony, which, far from harmonizing with the environment, on many occasions dispute its preponderance.
San Juan is a space where large modern constructions (or much more contemporary), battle the prominence with high heritage values.
Touristification has implied important spatial, social, cultural and political transformations for Old San Juan.
The Old City has been used as an attraction by tourism. And in the complex history of Puerto Rico, different images have been constructed by the tourism industry and governments.
Those images have served as an axis of attraction of an alienating gentrification.
Far from being an idyllic area as tourism marketing sells it, Puerto Rico is a zone of conflicts and contrasts, of wealth and poverty, a place of contradictions that began five centuries ago from the tragic event of European colonial expansion to the New World known as the discovery and the conquest.
