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- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
La Caldera de TaburienteA ten km wide, Eden-like volcanic crater on the island
of La Palma, where the Gaunches made their last stand.
GarajonayThe lush, mist-shrouded laurel forest on La Gomera is apparently a
pickled chunk of the subtropical forest that once covered the Mediterranean lands.
TeideTenerife’s colossal mountain sits in a national park alongside a vast ancient
caldera, home to plants found nowhere else on earth.
TimanfayaThe steaming mountains of this park on Lanzarote rose up and buried
11 villages in a series of 18thcentury eruptions.
The Canary Islands support four of Spain’s 13 national parks:
Ramon Llull(Majorca)
The 13thcentury
theologian from Palma
wroteLlibre d’Evast e
Blanquerna, often
viewed as the first major
literary work in Catalan.
Benito Pérez Galdós
(Gran Canaria) A great
of Spanish Realist
literature, Galdós has
been compared to
Dickens, Balzac and
Tolstoy.
Óscar Domínguez
(Tenerife) A painter from
an early age, Domínguez
left the Canaries for
Paris in early adulthood
and made his name as a
Surrealist.
Pedro García Cabrera
(La Gomera) A Canarian
poet who translated
his experiences of
imprisonment during
and after the Civil War
into verse.
Manolo Blahnik
(Tenerife) One of the
most revered shoe
designers of the modern
age grew up on a
banana plantation in
the Canary Islands.
Five cultural
icons from
Spain’s islands
