The Canarian festival year: what plays when
This weekend four villages on Tenerife are celebrating at the same time. In Las Portelas the opening speech is read on Friday evening, and then the announcing parade sets off. In La Culata there is mass and a procession on Saturday, followed by dancing until dawn. In Adeje, the La Hoya neighbourhood honours the Virgen de la Milagrosa, and in Santa Cruz the Salamanca - Uruguay district holds its patron saint festivities.
And at the same time, that very weekend, the speakers are going up in Los Silos for the Isla Baja Salsa Fest.
Both things happen at once, a few kilometres apart, and yet they are not the same. Anyone planning a Canarian summer would do well to understand this difference first.
Village fiesta or festival: two calendars, two audiences
The village fiesta is organised by the neighbours. There is a committee that hands over to the next one every year, there is a patron saint, and there is a programme that has run more or less unchanged for decades: mass, procession, folk music, a communal meal, and dancing in the evening. No ticket, no booking, and usually not even a website. The detailed programme is put out by the town hall or the committee two to four weeks beforehand, often only on a poster.
A festival works differently. It has a name, it has branding, it sells tickets, and the acts are announced months in advance. You travel to it, you do not stumble into it. It is often held on a large site, a stadium or a harbour esplanade, and accommodation nearby is worth booking early.
Both are Canarian and both are real. It is just that you can find one by accident, while the other takes planning.
One thing worth stating plainly: this article is about festivals. We have written separately about the traditional fiestas, the romerías and the patron saint celebrations, and that is where we go into their depth.
The rhythm of the year: a packed summer, a silent winter
The islas24 agenda currently lists 125 festival-type events across the eight islands. Their distribution by month sketches out the season on its own:
July: 10 events
August: 57 events
September: 30 events
October: 24 events
November: 1 event
December: 1 event
These figures describe our calendar, not the islands' total offering. The trend is clear all the same, and it matches what you notice on the ground: the Canarian festival year starts in summer, peaks in autumn, and falls almost silent in winter.
That winter-summer difference matters for planning. It is twenty degrees on the islands in December too, so winter works perfectly well for a holiday. For concerts, however, it does not: in January and February you will look for the big names in vain, because the calendar switches over to carnival.
Summer: the months of the big names
July is when the large stages start up. GranCa Live Fest runs for two days at the Gran Canaria stadium and is the festival that brings in international acts. The same month sees Cook Music Fest on the harbour esplanade in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Lava Live Fest on Lanzarote, and at the end of the month Marea Festival in Candelaria, right by the beach.
August is the busiest month, and this is when the smaller islands bring out their own. On El Hierro, Hierrock plays on the square in Echedo; on La Gomera, Salitre y Son in Valle Gran Rey; on La Palma, Vilus Festival at the Los Llanos stadium. On Tenerife there are the two days of Reggae Can in Punta del Hidalgo, and Arafo Urban Fest, which turns the village square into a hip hop stage for a single evening.
Autumn: this is where the offering is strongest
It surprises many people, but the best festival months come in September and October, once the summer crowds have gone home.
September brings PHE Festival in Puerto de la Cruz, Festival Boreal in Los Silos, LPA BMusic in Las Palmas, Noventate on La Palma, and Herofest on El Hierro, one day of which takes place at the natural pools of La Maceta.
October brings Gran Canaria Sum Festival, Fleje de Flow in Las Palmas, and Masdanza, the islands' international contemporary dance festival, now in its thirty-first edition. The same month sees Eólica in Granadilla de Abona, on the grounds of the renewable energy institute, probably the Canarian festival with the most unusual setting of all: the music plays beneath wind turbines.
Winter: the calendar changes register
In November and December the festival offering thins out. The weight shifts to concert halls and to the traditional celebrations: November brings the new wine festival, December the Christmas programme, and February brings carnival, which on these islands is a season in its own right.
Four festivals that travel the islands
There is one pattern you only notice when you look at the whole calendar at once: some Canarian festivals are not held in one place but move across the islands.
Festival Noon appears in our calendar on four islands, from late August to mid-October, with most of its stops on La Gomera. Reislas passes through five islands between September and October, from Tenerife to Fuerteventura. Canarias Jazz covers three islands from July to October, and Tensamba two.
This is useful because it turns planning on its head. You do not need to travel to another island for the festival: you just check when it reaches the island you are going to be on anyway.
What is worth knowing when you plan
Tickets. For the big summer festivals and for events with international acts, buy months ahead. Most of the smaller, council-run festivals, on the other hand, are free, and there is nothing to book.
Accommodation. This is the bottleneck, not the ticket. Around a stadium concert or a large festival, beds run out before tickets do. If the date is fixed, start with the room.
The detailed programme arrives late. This is a constant feature of Canarian festive culture, and it is not disorganisation: the day-by-day programme is published by town halls and committees two to four weeks before the event. Search three months ahead and you will often find only the dates, not the times.
In summer, look north rather than south. A good share of the summer festivals takes place on the northern side of the islands and on the smaller islands, not in the tourist centres. That is the best news in this article: these are the places where the programme is made for the people who live there, and the visitor is a guest rather than a target audience.
Do not look only at the festivals. If there is no big name on stage one weekend, there is almost certainly a fiesta in a nearby village. This very weekend proves it: four villages on Tenerife are celebrating at once, and you can walk into any of them.
Where to check what is on right now
The programmes can be searched in our agenda by date and by island, and they are updated as the town halls release the details. The official source is always the organiser's or the council's own site, and the larger festivals have their own websites and ticketing as well.
If you take one thing away from this article: the Canarian festival year is at its best in September and October, which is exactly when travelling is cheapest.
Photo: WOMAD, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2010. El Coleccionista de Instantes Fotografía & Video, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
