Canary Islands Spain

The Canary Islands archipelago is just off the north west coast of Western Sahara and has long been famous as an all-year round sunshine holiday destination.

There are seven main islands in the group – from west to east - Hierro, La Palma, La Gomera, Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote ; all surprisingly different to each other. There are a number of smaller islets, of which La Graciosa, to the north of Lanzarote, is the only one inhabited. The autonomous community of the Canary Islands is divided into two Provinces – Las Palmas of Gran Canaria being the eastern province and Santa Cruz de Tenerife the western. Although originally Las Palmas de Gran Canaria was the regional capital, there are now joint capital cities.

Geography of the Canary Islands

At its closest point only some 95 km from the African coast, the Canary Islands rise from the Jurassic ocean crust and, along with Cape Verdi, the Azores and the Savage Isles are part of Macronesia. All of the islands are volcanic in origin, although of vastly different time periods. Mount Teide, on Tenerife, is not only Spain’s largest mountain peak but also the world’s third largest volcano. La Palma has been the subject of much scientific research and/or wild speculation with regard to being the island that could cause the tidal wave that destroys the eastern seaboard of the USA, and its active volcano is being constantly monitored. All of the islands are mountainous and the further east one travels, the more desert-like much of the landscape can become. There are no rivers in the Canary Islands although, after heavy rainfall, the deeply cut barrancos can run with water quite ferociously.

History of the Canaries

Pliny the Elder and Homer – and perhaps Plato in his references to Atlantis – wrote about the Canary Islands and throughout early history they were known as The Fortunate Isles, the Summits of the Atlantic and the Garden of the Hesperides. Phoenicians, Romans and Arabs all colonised the islands but they were previously inhabited by native guanches probably of North African Berber origin. It was the Romans who first gave the name Canaries to the islands – because of the dogs that were prevalent there. So the islands were named after the dogs; the birds were named after the islands!

It was in 1402 that the Castilian forces first came to Lanzarote and other islands, led by Jean de Béthencourt, who became King of the Canary Islands. It took until the end of the century, though, to fully overcome the fierce resistance of the indigenous people and in 1496 the islands became part of the Kingdom of Castilla.

The Canary Islands proved an ideal place to use as a base for voyaging to the Americas – indeed, they still are as cruise ships call in, and tall ships and yacht races frequently call here or start from here. The strategic importance of the archipelago led to attacks from the Turks, the Dutch and the English – Admiral Lord Nelson lost his arm in a sea fight off Tenerife – but the Spanish successfully kept control.

The economy of the islands had been established mainly around the growing of sugar cane but during the 18th and 19th centuries this market became dominated by the Americas and the Canaries suffered an economic downturn. As a result there was mass emigration to Venezuela, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Cuba and other parts of Central and Sothern America and it wasn’t until the banana was introduced as a replacement for sugar cane at the end of the nineteenth century that the region started to recover. At this time, many British other European businesses also came, helping the infrastructure develop enormously.

Franco was appointed Commander of the Canary Islands in 1936 – in order to try to get him as far away from Madrid as possible- but it was from here that he was called to lead the military uprising that led to the civil war. There was little resistance to the military in the archipelago but the regime after the war was particularly harsh on this area, leading to a great feeling of resentment. It emerged just a few years ago that Franco himself was so concerned about the islands that at one stage he tried to sell them to Portugal and then, a few years later, he offered them to the USA as part of a deal for having bases in Spain.

With the development of tourism during the last 50 years, there has been much more migration to the Canary Islands from the mainland of Spain and they now have a very Spanish ‘feel’ to them – although most true Canarian people are still very proud of their guanche heritage and their traditional culture is still very active.

Language of the Canary Islands

Although the Guanche language of the indigenous peoples is extinct there are still some remnants of it in the local Spanish dialect – which even Spanish visitors from the peninsula often find difficult to understand. What is more peculiar is the presence of words adopted from the English – such as queque meaning cake and guagua, which means bus and was originally the way the local people pronounced the English word ‘wagon’ at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In La Gomera there is a whistling language that was developed to allow people to communicate across the wide ravines of the island and this is still in existence – but mainly for the benefit of tourists nowadays.

Economy of the Canaries

More than one third of the GDP of the Canary Islands comes from tourism. Because of the perceived image that the archipelago is a ‘cheap end’ destination, the islands have increasingly developed both rural tourism and more exclusive areas during recent years as the lower end of the market has decreased significantly.

Construction has also been one of the major industries but agriculture is still important – especially with the export of bananas, tomatoes and tobacco. The use of wind power is developing throughout the islands and, because of the lack of light pollution in the skies, this is a very popular area for long distance telescopes. Some of the world’s most powerful observatories are located here and NASA also have important tracking stations.

Canary Islands Climate

The Canary Islands have sometimes been known as the ‘islands of eternal spring’ because of their year-round pleasant weather. Basically, there is warm, sunny weather for most of the year with summer temperatures rarely becoming too hot – the maximum is about 28° in most places – and the winter rarely dropping into single figures at night except in the mountains.

However, the further west you travel, the wetter the islands become, with the result that Hierro and La Palma are far greener than Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. Similarly, because of the inland mountains, both Tenerife and Gran Canaria have much more rain in the north of the island than in the south – hence the major tourist areas being in the southern parts.

The Trade Winds are part of the reason for the mild conditions and they tend to be stronger in the summer than in the winter but occasionally they can veer in direction and come from the Sahara, resulting in a hot, sand-carrying wind, a calima, which can be quite unpleasant.