In July 1997 the Spanish Government awarded the construction of the Las Palmas-Telde Desalination Plant to DETELCA U.T.E. The project consists mainly of replacing the existing Las Palmas I desalination plant of the MSF type with two advanced low temperature multi-effect distillation (LT-MED) seawater desalination units of 17,500 m(3)/d capacity each.