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| | Need to Know | Capital City Las Palmas de Gran Canaria | | Tipping 10-15% | | Electricity 220 V | | Weights and Measurements Metric System |
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People & Language
Spanish, or more precisely Castilian, is the official language.
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Religion
Roman Catholicism gained an early entry into the Canary Islands. Most of the original Guanches converted to Christianity. Less than 50% of the Canarios turn up for Sunday service but all the Canarios are baptized and have church weddings and funerals.
Canarios are not orthodox and rigid. They are a friendly people. People normally have their social meetings on the streets. Invitations to dinner and gatherings at home are the exception rather than the rule. Canarios are Mediterranean in the sense that they start their day late and take an afternoon siesta from 2 to 5 pm, after which they put in a few hours of work. They socialize till late in the night.
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Food
The cuisine of the Canary Islands offers many dishes of fish served with wrinkled potato and a special sauce called "mojo picon." The traditional dishes are watercress salad and a fish dish called "sancocho canario" served with hot sauce. Locally grown tomatoes, avocadoes, bananas and papayas feature in a large number of their dishes. Rather than eating bread, they roast corn, wheat and barley and eat along with the dishes. You can eat excellent local pastries, meat pies and nougats of corn meal and molasses.
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Culture & Crafts
The Canarios’ musical heritage is symbolized by the "timple". This is a ukelele style instrument and may have been introduced to the islands by the Berber slaves in the 15th century. At traditional fiestas, the islanders still dance to the "timple".
The cave paintings dating from 13th and 14th century were left behind by the Guanches. With the Spanish conquest of the Islands, its own traditional culture took a back seat. It took centuries for some vestiges of the traditional Canario culture to be restored. In recent times, Cesar Manique enjoyed a degree of international recognition for tireless efforts to preserve Canary culture under the onslaught of mass tourism.
Pottery, basketwork based on palm leaves, cane and reed, delicate woodcarvings, skilled openwork and embroidery are some of the crafts pursued actively by the Canarios.
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Travel Tools
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