The great firework display at San Lorenzo is one of Gran Canaria’s major summer festivals.

There exists a place in Gran Canaria that emulates a volcano every August. Surrounded by mountains, the neighbourhood of San Lorenzo, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, burns hundreds of kilos of gunpowder to set the night alight, and is famous for its intensity and duration. This particular eruption has several focal points that surround the town, and attracts tens of thousands of people year after year, who come along to experience this vibrant spectacle of light, fire and sound.

The Virgin of Santa María de Guía Fiestas are one of the essential summer attractions in Gran Canaria.

Groucho Marx lives on. Nowadays he a giant who comes alive every month of August in Santa María de Guía, at the north of Gran Canaria. He blends in with the rest of the colourful and crazy looking characters at the Papagüevos street procession, a peculiar collection of giant dummies without which the town’s  Fiestas de la Virgen wouldn’t make proper sense.  These over-sized dummies are really important to the fiestas as they come out every other day onto the streets until 15th August, providing giant-sized fun.  

The fiesta of La Rama de Agaete, in Gran Canaria, provides great fun thanks to an age-old tradition here at this stunning corner of the island.

Just listen. That’s the sound of silence and hushed emotions. Just minutes before five o’clock in the morning, the silvery light of the growing moon is etched over the sea, blending in with the night time shadows that reign over the plunging cliff edges, and –further up- in the pine groves. Down at the village of Agaete, the expectant and murmuring crowds are just waiting for something to happen. What might it be? The answer is La Diana, a firework that rips through the early morning calm at 05.00  to announce the start of the great fiesta day of La Rama de Agaete, in Gran Canaria, as it does every 4th August.

La Pila Verde baptismal font at the Church of Santiago in Gáldar, in Gran Canaria, contains five centuries of stories.

Five centuries of history are squeezed into the Pila Verde baptismal font at the Temple of Santiago de los Caballeros de Gáldar. This piece of pottery was heated in one of the pottery ovens that proliferated all through the 15th century in the Triana neighbourhood in Seville. But it wasn’t done by any old craftsman. Its large size would have us believe it was the work of a true master, one of only a few who could put together objects of such great proportions without running the risk of cracking and therefore fracturing the piece.

“The landscape here is truly inspirational”, so says the creative soul of Custo Barcelona in his appearance at Gran Canaria Moda Cálida.

Custo Dalmau is a designer who looks like he comes from the future. Or from another planet. So it is no wonder then that his latest collection carries the name of ‘Light years’. The creator behind the Custo Barcelona brand alighted on the island with his galactic space ship and shone like the stars themselves in this year’s 2017 Gran Canaria Moda Cálida.

The area of Bañaderos, at the north of Gran Canaria, is world a away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

“Look at that, they’re happy enough now!”. The boy is talking about the fish feeding on bread crumbs that he has just thrown into the water for them, and which have disappeared in a matter of seconds. The only thing left now under this transparent marine canvass is a group of cabosos, lisas and other expectant little fish. But the lad has already gone back to his parents, who have forgot all about the time at this huge solarium, measuring over two thousand square metres that stretches out to the edge of the natural pools at Bañaderos, in Arucas, along the stunning north coast of Gran Canaria.