Blog Oficial de Turismo de Gran Canaria

The unique trees of Gran Canaria offer their particular summary of the island’s history and biodiversity.

The unique trees of Gran Canaria have their own given name and the people of the island speak to them as old friends, venerable elders or a mother in whose shade several generations have grown up. This is the case with La Castañera Grande de Las Lagunetas, an over 300-year-old chestnut in Vega de San Mateo whose wood ash was used to heal the navels of children who were born on this island sheltered in the grove.

Like an actor refusing to leave the stage at the end of his scene, the sun is reluctant to abandon Agaete, in the north-east of Gran Canaria. By its side, the Dragon’s Tail also squeezes the last few moments out of the day while its pyramid-shaped cliffs are bathed in the sunset’s gold and bronze tones.

The circular route through Teror’s Álamo Ravine embraces Gran Canaria’s biodiversity and countryside.

The ravines are arteries where Gran Canaria’s life blood flows most intensely. Here, sheltered between stone walls, nature drinks water from the springs, it climbs, flowers, creeps, puts down roots and multiplies. It also lays green blankets over the basalt rock; it squeezes into implausible gaps and offers shelter between light and shade for anyone or anything that requires protection from the hustle and bustle of the world. This all happens on Teror’s Álamo Ravine path.

The spectacular jade green outcrops and ochre and reddish tones laid bare by erosion are the result of the explosive meeting between fire and water as the island was formed.

In Gran Canaria, the winter months radiate a light that help you squeeze every second out of your day on the beach or in the mountains where blossoming flowers demonstrate that the island is a warm and permanent exception to the winter rules.

The rock listened to a murmur of people. Their faces gave away a blur of hopes, fears, courage and uncertainty. It welcomed people into its rocky arms and protected them as best it could, for millennia, like a mother would. This was how the ancient population of Gran Canaria found shelter in amazing spots such as La Fortaleza and managed to develop a unique culture in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Canary Island sage flowers carpet broad swathes of the summit such as Montañón Negro and other areas of the island.

Chameleon-like Gran Canaria is constantly changing colour. Canary Island sage flowers dress ravines and hillsides in a glorious purple. This stunning, long robe begins 1,800 metres above sea level and trails practically down to the coast. Its bright colour stands out against the black background of the volcanic ash on the foothills of Montañón Negro, one of the most recent volcanoes on the island.

This accessible two-kilometre circular route round Los Tilos is the perfect excursion to enjoy this mysterious, leafy laurel forest, which has survived from the Tertiary Period.

You and your family can live out this fairytale in Gran Canaria. This story begins in the sky and draws to a close under the trees, where life has found a place for itself, anchored in time, making this a bastion of the island’s laurel forest. This type of forest existed long before any human beings trod the Earth, and it has found refuge in the Natural Reserve of Los Tilos de Moya.

The Biosphere Reserve and the World Heritage Site of Risco Caído and the Sacred Mountains of Gran Canaria are the very essence and reflection of the island’s unique qualities, acknowledged in these two UNESCO declarations.

The magic of the Gran Canaria Biosphere Reserve is swaddled in a murmur of nature and human heartbeats. On the one hand, the space shows the thousand faces of the Island’s landscape. The other faces of the land are far from metaphoric. They belong to the men and women who have proven their close links to the environment through traces of rural uses, such as the case of lime ovens, tar or fish ovens, charcoal bunkers and windmills. Life literally relied on nature, as shown in the use of pine needles to fill mattresses and plump up the place where livestock slumbered.

Gran Canaria is renewing the certificate that declares the Island’s Biosphere Reserve a Starlight Destination

Gran Canaria continues to gaze dreamily up at the skies, with a passion that expands throughout the universe. The Island has renewed the certificate declaring its Biosphere Reserve a Starlight Destination until 2025. This certification recognises its commitment to astrotourism and consequently to protecting its night skies, keeping that extraordinary window on the stars wide open, for people from all over the world to gaze out of every day.

Fifteen million years ago, the ocean used to spread its blue expanse right over the same place where the island of Gran Canaria stands today. Then, the island rose from the bottom of the sea as a result of the force of volcanic eruptions, as this archipelago was born from volcanoes. The subsequent building and erosional stages gave rise to an astonishing and complex geological environment which lies behind the rich landscapes and the environmental and ethnographic wealth that attract visitors from all over the world.