Gran Canaria combines fire, sea, festivals and tradition when celebrating La Noche de San Juan - St John’s Eve or Midsummer’s Eve.

The shortest nights of the year are also the most intense in Gran Canaria. The sea, the moon and fire melt into one on the island the night before the feast of St John, every 23rd June (Midsummer’s Eve), to experience an annual ritual of joy, hope and purification that is celebrated particularly intense in this corner of the Atlantic. This is where the elements of Nature and the people of Gran Canaria come together to hold an unforgettable evening where boredom is the first thing to burn away on the fire.

The historic town centre of Villa de Agüimes, in the southeast of Gran Canaria, is a heady and empowering setting.

Life is art in Agüimes. Every corner of its old town centre looks like it has been chiselled out especially. These painstaking efforts have created a setting in which tradition and history have melted into one. A whole grid of main streets, backstreets, squares and alleyways have forged a quite heady beauty.

Everyone is aware of regions throughout Spain that pride themselves on their long tradition of producing cured meat and sausages. However, among these areas, the chorizo and black pudding made in Gran Canaria’s town of Teror clearly stand out as world-class.

The founding neighbourhood of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria offers history, culture, cuisine and the odd enigma.

A stroll around the district of Vegueta begins at a very distinct point, back to a time over five centuries ago. At the foot of Guiniguada Ravine, gigantic palm trees rose up and served as a beacon to guide boats bringing in Spanish troops deployed at this point since 1478. The roots of those first historic palm trees that stood tall in what we now call Vegueta are also the roots to the name of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

They say a recipe itself doesn’t have a soul, rather it is the chef that provides it. Nevertheless, nobody doubts that crockery is a fundamental part of a recipe today: it enhances the dish, while each piece adds a dash of beauty to the end product.

This opinion is shared among critics and gastronomic experts all around the world, so much so that neuroscience has taken it on to study just how the shape of crockery, along with its colour, material and density all influence how, what and how much we eat.

Although Sancocho is not regularly made on a daily basis nowadays, it continues to be the most typical dish for Good Friday, and a highly regarded “plate-filler” any time of the year.

Up until the end of the 19th century, fish in Gran Canaria had to be sold daily, and was only consumed at coastal towns, as there were no ways of keeping it fresh. However, around the turn of the 20th century, changes began to creep in to our cuisine: our range of foods began to increase thanks to the technique of salting. Around this time sancocho made its presence felt.