On a midwinter night in Las Palmas, the temperature was a balmy 20 degrees Celsius, and the locals were complaining. “¡Qué frio!” (“It’s so cold!”) exclaimed a woman at a patio table in the old town, shivering as she pulled her jacket around herself.
It is not without reason that the ancient Greeks described the Canary Islands as the Fortunate Islands – but Gran Canaria is perhaps the luckiest of them all. Not only does the island boast a near-perfect climate and a laid-back lifestyle that flies a rainbow flag for tolerance and diversity, but it also has a capital, Las Palmas, whose historic architecture, fantastic city beach, vibrant gastronomic scene, world-class Carnival, and generally a sky-high quality of life, make it by far the most complete and cosmopolitan city of the archipelago.
While the resorts of Gran Canaria’s south coast teem with cheap and cheerful tourism, ‘The Palms’ – geographically remote in the far north of the island – retains the character and reality of a large Spanish city that just gets on with life.
It was just such a winter day that I flew from Madrid and installed myself in the Plaza Mayor de Santa Ana, one of the many bijou boutique hotels that have opened in the old city district of Vegueta.
Leaning on my balcony in this beautifully converted 1915 Art Nouveau mansion – the latest of the Cordial group’s quartet of design-forward urban hotelitos – I enjoyed a view of the city’s main square with the mighty Cathedral of Santa Ana, the only cathedral in the Canary Islands. main religious building, which looms on the other side.
From the hotel’s chic rooftop bar, the cranes and platforms of a huge container port, still the city’s economic powerhouse, stood out against the steely blue of the Atlantic Ocean.
At lunchtime, locals braved the weather (now a more bearable 23°C) to stroll the cobbled streets of Vegueta, chatting along the way in accents reminiscent of the melodious Spanish of Venezuela or Colombia.
From the wide open windows of passing cars came the lilting strains of salsa or, if the driver was of a younger generation, pulsating strains of reggaetón. Las Palmas has the delicate sensuality of a Latin American city – and is less than half the flight time from Britain.
Around Santa Ana, ground zero of the city’s foundation phase in the 16th centurye century I wandered idly among palatial houses with grand facades, carved wooden balconies and decorative doorways in gray basalt stone. I had never really thought of the Canary Islands as a cultural hotspot, but Las Palmas belied that preconception.
In the city center I counted six museums, including the groundbreaking Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (caam.net) and the Museo Canario (elmuseocanario.com), an elegant 19e-century mansion whose glass cases were filled with pre-Colombian art, indigenous pottery and rows of grinning skulls.
If Vegueta was a historic center to rival those of Andalusia’s major cities, the neighboring district of Triana, into which Las Palmas expanded over the following centuries, was a bustling commercial center, in places as chic as anything in Barcelona.
A slow crawl down Calle Perez Galdós, Triana’s trendiest shopping street, took me past cool concept stores, fifth wave coffee bars, vinyl record shops, hip menswear boutiques and an interior design emporium (Trastornados) so beautiful you almost live in it. Halfway down the street stood the colonial mansion intended for Cordial’s next urban property, which would open later this year.
A delight of Las Palmas, I found, was its legion of bistro-style restaurants, helmed by Canarian chefs and with local ingredients to the fore. Everything blooms in Gran Canaria’s growing season, all year round: tomatoes taste even in mid-December, and tropical fruits such as papaya are common at the hotel breakfast buffet. The island even grows its own coffee.
The combination of a richly varied supply of ingredients and an impressive talent pool among the city’s chefs, many of whom have returned from stages in the peninsula’s Michelin-starred restaurants, makes Las Palmas one of Spain’s gastro cities of the moment .
Triana in particular was a happy hunting ground, with restaurants Qué Leche (restaurantequeleche.es), Bevir (restaurantebevir.com), Triciclo (triciclobar.com) and El Canaia de Cano (el-canaia-de-cano.eatbu.com) competing for the freshest, most radical take on local classics like ropa vieja and rabbit en salmorejo.
At Muxgo (muxgo.es) on the grounds of Hotel Santa Catalina, a grande dame that recently received a lavish €40 million makeover, I was impressed by a menu degustación that showcased rustic island flavors (pine bark, Tejeda honey , prickly pear) into an exquisite kind of New Canary cuisine.
But for contemporary culture seekers, the biggest draw is Las Canteras, a three-kilometre stretch of sand that is undoubtedly Spain’s most spectacular city beach. The high-rise streets behind Las Canteras have no pretensions to glamour, but this is where the vibrant energy of Las Palmas is most seductive.
On a Saturday evening the neighborhood was very busy. Talleres Palermo (tallerespalermo.es), a cavernous cultural space in a former carpenter’s warehouse, packed with the usual enthusiastic crowd of surfers, digital nomads and creatives from Northern Europe. After dinner at the Michelin-starred Tabaiba (tabaibarestaurante.com), undoubtedly the city’s most inspiring new restaurant, chef Abraham Ortega told me that the pandemic had made young palmenses like him, who were forced by the pandemic were returning from their exiles in Madrid or Berlin. realize that they are better off living and creating in their hospitable hometown.
I took the long walk from Las Canteras back to Vegueta along the sea, my pale arms fanned by a gentle Atlantic breeze. During my short stay here, I thought, I have never been kissed on both cheeks by so many strangers, nor addressed so often as hermoso (beautiful) or mi niño (my child).
What finally convinced me about Las Palmas, apart from the warmth of the winters, was the friendliness of the welcome.
Essentials
Iberia (iberia.com), Easyjet (easyjet.com) and Ryanair (ryanair.com) all fly direct to Gran Canaria from various UK airports, with returns from £30.
Hotel Cordial Plaza Mayor de Santa Ana (00 34 928 501122; becordial.com) has double rooms from £151 per night.
Paul Richardson was a guest of Turismo Gran Canaria (grancanaria.com). His book, Hidden Valley, Finding Freedom in the Deep Lands of Spain (Abacus), is now available.
For more information about Las Palmas, see lpavisit.com