It does initially a short trip through some theoretical landmarks of the recent economic
literature which are considered most significant from the point of view of the relevance
of production and circulation of knowledge for the economic development, the logic of
spatial localisation of economic activities, and the role of institutions and physical
geography in the economic growth. It makes a remark on the importance of the regional
systems as an axis of attraction and rejection towards the localisation of economic
activities, and the predominance of the processes linked to the knowledge at the
moment of determining the nature of the economic location which takes place in them.
At the same time, it records the recent debate over the importance of geographical and
institutional factors when explaining the problems of growth, stressing the
predominance given to the institutional features. With these general assumptions it
makes an approximation on the issue of the growth in Canary Islands. To achieve this
target relates a series of hypotheses which aims to characterise the historic evolution of
the Canary's position in the context of international economic flows, the intrinsic
limitations of its productive activities from the point of view of growth, the bottlenecks
derived from the existing formal and informal institutions, and some deficiencies in the
actual public policies orientation. Finally, it draws certain general criteria that would
inform the public policies and the private strategies to stimulate the economic growth in
concordance with the potentialities and restrictions derived from the present stage of the
world economy.