The Womad Festival provides a great chance to get to know Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the island as a whole.

The whole world will be up singing and dancing between 7th and 10th November at Santa Catalina Park in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, with the celebration of the Womad (World of Music, Arts & Dance) Festival, an event that will bring together dozens of artists from a wide range of places such as South Africa, Argentina, Morocco, United Kingdom, Mali, the West Indies and Israel.

Gran Canaria harvests chestnuts until midway through December, and visitors can savour their autumnal flavours on the way back from the beach.

They are shaped like littIe hearts. It is no surprise then that they are considered the real spirit of autumn, with a very special nuance in the case of Gran Canaria. At other latitudes, the chestnut heralds the arrival of the cold, with stories of families sat around the burning logfire while the world outside is freezing and the wolves are howling. Don’t worry, there are no wolves in Gran Canaria. Besides, right here you can savour their autumnal flavour on your way back from the beach if you come across a stall where they cleverly roast them for you on a camp stove.

The workshop of watchmaker Pedro Macías in the district of Vegueta in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria provides a gift for the senses.

As a boy there was a lovely American-made wall clock in Pedro Macías Falcón’s house. It was over a hundred years old, that’s old even for a clock. When he was on his own he would play around with it, scrutinize it and put it to his ear to hear the tick-tocking of its little metal heart. He got so caught up in the hands of the clock that Pedro ended up being a watchmaker, learning the tricks of the trade in the workshop of family relative José Henríquez. The workshop looked more like a magical kingdom of chords, anchors, rods and minute hands there in the peace and quiet of Tenoya.

Top professional tennis star Carla Suárez gives us a few recommendations to help us fully enjoy our stay on her home island of Gran Canaria.

Long before the grass of Wimbledon began sprouting, or the hard court of Roland Garros was laid, there was the sand of Las Canteras, the favourite beach for top women’s tennis player Carla Suárez. “It is incredible to have such a great beach in the heart of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. I spent most of my childhood there”, she recalls. Carla also spent many of her early years around Plaza de Santa Ana, opposite the Cathedral, running after the pigeons that flew up into the air like dreams. Her dream indeed came true, as she became a player on the international professional circuit.

Mogán’s beach and port, in Gran Canaria, make up a happy, almost amphibious spot, a place that time seems to have forgotten.

It has been this way for as long as we can remember. The fishermen and the sun follow the same clues to reach this point of coastline. One such clue is a rock that local fishermen have coined ‘pointy stone’, due to its peculiar shape, which has come to be a sculpture half way between the beach and Puerto de Mogán. Together they make up one of the essential spots to visit along the quite fascinating coastline of Gran Canaria. When you see the ‘pointy stone’, just stop for a moment, as if time itself seems to have stopped.

If you go up to the top of the Cathedral of Santa Ana, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, you are treated to a panoramic and illustrative view over the city.

It takes less than two minutes to reach the sky. The time it takes to pay 1.50€, take a modern lift for around twenty seconds, and then walk up the 54 steps that lead up to the top of the south tower of the Cathedral of Santa Ana in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, a religious monument from where the city calls out to the heights.