GR, PR and SL: how to read Canarian trail markings
You are walking a Canarian trail and a rock carries two painted rectangles, white above yellow. Two hundred metres later the same colours form a sort of elbow. And at a junction that looked perfectly sensible, a cross.
These are not decorative marks or somebody's graffiti. They are a language, and it takes five minutes to learn. Knowing it changes how you walk on these islands.
The three letters: GR, PR and SL
A waymarked trail carries a code that tells you, before you set off, what you are getting into. The classification is by length:
GR (Gran Recorrido, long distance): over 50 kilometres. White and red marks. Multi day routes, designed to be walked in stages.
PR (Pequeño Recorrido, short distance): between 10 and 50 kilometres. White and yellow marks. Most are a single day.
SL (Sendero Local, local trail): under 10 kilometres. White and green marks. Short walks, often circular.
The codes and colours are not free to use: they are registered with the Spanish patent and trademark office in the name of the Spanish mountain sports federation. If a trail carries them, it has been through a formal approval process.
How to read the paint
Three signs will see you through an entire route:
Two parallel rectangles, one above the other: continuity. You are on the trail, carry straight on.
A cross: wrong way. That path is not the trail, however right it looks.
Two strokes forming an angle: change of direction. The mark bends towards the side you should follow.
The practical rule teaches itself: if you have gone a good while without seeing a mark, stop improvising. Go back to the last one you saw. Getting lost on these islands almost never starts with a big mistake. It starts with five minutes of "this must be the way".
What "waymarked" actually guarantees
Approved does not mean easy. It means checked: somebody has surveyed the route, confirmed the ground is passable, installed the signage and taken on the job of maintaining it.
That gives you three concrete things: a route that genuinely exists, consistent signage from start to finish, and somebody whose responsibility it is to repair it.
What it does not give you is a low level of difficulty, protection from the weather, or any guarantee that the trail is open today. Closures for wind, rockfall or fire risk are common in the Canaries, and an approved route closes like any other.
The Canarian case: one network per island, plus the GR 131
Here is something almost no guidebook explains: the network is not the same on every island. Each island council runs its own, and the level of approval, the maintenance and even the naming vary from one island to the next.
The one common thread is the GR 131, the long distance route that crosses the islands end to end and forms the backbone of island walking on several of them.
Which leads to one simple habit before you set out: look up the official route page on the website of the island council where you are, not a generic description. That is where closures and rerouting appear.
The trails that need a permit
Two cases that catch people out, because they depend on prior authorisation rather than on signage:
The descent of the Masca gorge, with compulsory booking and equipment.
Access to the summit of Teide above 3,555 metres, explained in our permit and cable car guide.
And if the plan is to walk without a car, stringing together buses and trails, we have that in the Canaries without a car guide.
Before any long route it is worth going over what you should know about safety. Most mountain rescues on the islands do not begin with a fall. They begin with a late start and no daylight left.
Sources
Spanish Federation of Mountain Sports and Climbing, approval protocol for GR, PR and SL trails, and signage of approved trails.
Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Caminos Naturales programme (GR 131).
