Blog Oficial de Turismo de Gran Canaria

The exhibition rooms propose a route around Gran Canaria’s traditional crafts featuring more than a thousand objects and reflecting the island’s social transformations.

Before light, there was stone. Oxen and camels were used to bring basalt blocks down to the coast from the Fataga ravine so that master craftsmen could turn them into the building blocks for the Maspalomas Lighthouse, demonstrating the type of technical perfection that still astounds us today. Their hands crafted the idea captured on paper by the engineer Juan de León y Castillo. On 1st February 1890, the lighthouse projected its first beam that would have been impossible without the knowledge and hard graft of workmen who knew how to transform those million-year-old rocks into pure progress.

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.

From the top of a tower to the bottom of the sea. It all fits perfectly into the world of experiences that unfolds during Holy Week in Gran Canaria.

The instrument is part of the Canary Islands' identity and an example of the universality intrinsic to timple players such as Gran Canaria's German López.

Greatness is sometimes found in the smallest things. The musician Germán López made this discovery at an early age, when he was barely five years old. He wanted to play the guitar, but his fingers hardly reached the strings, so a teacher suggested that he started with the timple. Discovering the infinite possibilities of that seemingly humble instrument turned what was once a passing solution into a lifelong passion.

I have lived on this peak for millions of years. I know because I have been keeping track of the suns and moons. I am the son of time and of an old volcano that is no longer here. The wind, the sun, the rain and the passing of the days have made me what I am: the prince and sentinel of a kingdom made of stone. But I am not alone. The pine woods and rocks that keep me company on these heights give shelter to beings that seem to be made of the same light that is now starting to draw its veil back. Hence, the lizards here are made of gold, emerald and sapphire.

The Book Fair is yet another example of the intense relationship between Gran Canaria and literature in all its manifestations.