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Blog Oficial de Turismo de Gran Canaria

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Sustainability finds a home in Gran Canaria

Gran Canaria has been awarded the demanding ‘Biosphere Destination’ seal, also earning a spot in the top fifteen European destinations with the most certified accommodation.

Gran Canaria takes care of you and itself. The island embraces its primary sector and invites us all to eat local produce. It also raises awareness on responsible water use and caring for natural resources, from its oceans and beaches to its forests and summits. These are examples of a global commitment which implicates not only public administrations but also the private sector. For a while now, all Gran Canaria’s paths have been leading to the same place: the need to be an increasingly sustainable tourist destination.


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Barranco de la Mina

The magical green world of Gran Canaria

The natural greenery of Gran Canaria shines through in the most wonderful and surprising ways.

There exists a magical kingdom with laurel trees, wild olive trees, willows, arbutus, yews, plus the indigenous viñátigos, paloblancos, tilos and mocanes, and it’s all here in Gran Canaria. This list of exotic words, which might seem to be taken from a book of fairytales, goblins and wizards, actually describes the trees that provide the body and soul to the mysterious, primitive laurel tree forest that hugs tightly onto the island and emits the clear, thumping beat of its green heart.


Roque Nublo, behind flowering almond trees

The almond tree in bloom, the prelude to a great gastronomic treasure

The real secret behind the marzipan recipe is its fruit.

The sprouting flowers of the almond trees hail the arrival of spring in Gran Canaria, early on in the month of February. The hilly regions of the island are decked out in a pink carpet, and the beautiful trees provide the sought after fruit which for several centuries was the main driving force behind the local economy of the village of Tejeda.


Roque Bentayga

Gran Canaria, Starlight destination

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.


Carnival "comparsa" dancing troupe. Las Canteras Avenue

Gran Canaria, Carnival is back home again

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.


Faro de Maspalomas

Your own personal palm tree

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, Las Canteras beach

The voice of the ocean

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.


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