Unesco declares Gran Canaria a Starlight Destination in recognition of the high quality of its skies for star gazing.

Gran Canaria has graduated with honours at the school of amazing night skies.  Unesco has declared the island a Starlight Destination, which certifies it as a privileged location for anyone who wishes to contemplate the stars and feel they can nearly touch them. Gran Canaria now joins a select club that includes Chile, New Zealand and Hawaii.

The spirit of the Carnival possesses a thousand different faces in Gran Canaria and reflects hundreds of years of tradition.

Ana lives in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Ever year she improvises with a couple of different fancy dress costumes, while there is one fancy dress that she uses year after year for carnival. She goes outdoors in the middle of the fiestas in her pyjamas, a pair of slippers, a worn-out but adorable blue-coloured teddy bear, and a mug with a camomile tea bag hanging on a thread. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what shapes the unbreakable spirit of the carnival, which, on the island of Gran Canaria, is a particularly lively and rowdy affair.

The Canarian palm tree forms part of the landscape and identity of Gran Canaria, and will linger in your mind following your stay

They have always been around, rustling in the breeze, providing shade, breaking up blue skies with their slim shadows. A group of them even led to the name of the island’s capital city, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, over five centuries ago now. Poet Bartolomé Cairasco de Figueroa (1583-1610) used to say that they were “so, so tall, much taller than the Pyramids in Egypt”, while the chronicals of the Conquest referred to the island “being just like a garden, covered with palm trees”.

The Alfredo Kraus Auditorium triumphs as an icon in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria for how it fits in with its surroundings. 

As a boy, Juan Bordes described the existence of some little caboso fish that inhabited the pools left at low tide by Las Canteras beach. Juan then grew up, became a man and a famous sculptor, but those little fish continued to swim around in his mind, the very place from where they came out to become the sculptural series set into the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The mermaids on the façade are inspired by those early salty memories.

The humble potato, one of the jewels of Gran Canaria’s cuisine, has a passionate tale to tell.

Let us tell you the story of an incredible journey which is not yet over. Our hero in this story is not that big, but has become world famous, has received countless awards, and has inspired poems and songs, has fed whole generations, and has become one of the greatest symbols of Gran Canaria’s gastronomy.