Garcia Marquez has remained silent on the Macondo issue

The town's mayor proposed renaming Aracataca after Macondo, the fictional setting for the writer's most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Mayor Pedro Sanchez hoped the change would bring more tourists to the town.

More than 90% of votes cast were in favour of the change, but only half the necessary 7,400 people went to vote.

Magical town

One Hundred Years of Solitude, a tale of several generations of one family based around the small town of Macondo, is widely regarded as Garcia Marquez's masterpiece.

Garcia Marquez's portrait is painted in Aracataca streets

In the novel, Macondo plays host to a string of fantastic events and barely believable happenings, including an insomnia plague and four years of rain after a massacre of banana workers.

Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, like Macondo a banana-growing town near Colombia's Caribbean coastline, in 1927.

Although he moved away from the town when he was nine, the man who later became a Nobel laureate has credited Aracataca with inspiring him to write novels.

Mayor Pedro Mendez hoped that changing the name of the town to Aracataca-Macondo would attract tourists.