The pleasant Gran Canaria summer is an invitation to enjoy life to the full with endless days in which to do anything you like.

The sun towers high over the summer skies in Gran Canaria and will not budge an inch. If you think about it, you can see why. Under its blazing glory, the days run happily on for ever. In this the summer season the days have a ritual-like feel to them, reflecting a serene beauty under an ever present bright light.

Here begins a journey of the senses around Gran Canaria, through the colour blue, one of the island’s essential elements.

Some living beings from Gran Canaria inhabit an ever blue territory, because the sea and the sky are the canvass on which their lives are etched. The first shearwaters, Atlantic birds par excellence, begin nesting in March high on the crags on the island. At nightfall these marine tones are intensified, and the birds can be spotted flying round in groups, skimming over the water, gliding for a few minutes before shooting forward once again with five or six flaps of their wings. Suddenly, they plunge under the sea in search of fish, splitting the frontier between the two immense blue expanses of Gran Canaria.

Christmas in Gran Canaria is something else and there are thousands of stories illustrating this. Come and write your own.

“In Gran Canaria you can row along in just your bermuda shorts in December”, so says the champion and promotor of the Stand Up Paddle Race Pro-Am.

Made by sand sculptors from around the world, Las Canteras’ Belén de Arena de las Canteras is a Christmas icon on Gran Canaria.

I like to rest under the shelter of the Barra de Las Canteras. This natural reef slows the momentum of the Atlantic and provides quiet nights for fish like me. At dawn, when the sun's rays colour the surface shades of pink and purple, I begin to move around the bay and peck at algae with my parrot's beak. At this hour, the early birds of the human variety also begin to make their way into the sea, splashing and swimming as if they were fish themselves.

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So, you think you know all there is to know about Maspalomas, do you? Well, for a start, Maspalomas is so much more than just a beach. The sands of this paradise in the south of Gran Canaria hide a multitude of histories and curiosities.

The Gran Canaria Tourist Board opens a window for the millions of people who want to keep in touch with the island and everything it offers.

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Gran Canaria’s coast is full of places between land and sea where time stops for families to discover the true magnitude of life surrounded by amazing coastal creatures.

Manolo the Dangerous guides his boat into the clear waters. Nearby, on the sand, you’ll see people walking, with some taking their first swim of the day. Whilst others breakfast on one of the promenade’s terraces. It’s another day at Las Canteras beach.