Charco de La Aldea

El Charco de La Aldea is a broad coastal lagoon in the municipality of La Aldea de San Nicolás, at the western end of Gran Canaria, inside a valley that opens between vast walls of stone. When no fiesta is under way, its still waters give back the calm and brightness of the municipality itself and the deep roots of its history. Early aboriginal dwellers set up a series of settlements on this very spot, some of them said to go back beyond 500 BC. A few metres away, between the lagoon and the sea, lies Rubén Díaz Park, a small woodland of pine, palm and endemic plants with tables and chairs.

Every 11 September the lagoon becomes the setting of the Fiesta del Charco, when crowds of residents and visitors wade into the water to keep alive a custom that long precedes the Spanish Conquest. Its origin lies in the embarbascada, a collective fishing technique used by the ancient inhabitants of Gran Canaria; according to the tourism office of La Aldea, that fishing tradition was transformed in the 17th century into the patron saint fiestas of San Nicolás de Tolentino, and later came to be called the Fiesta of El Charco, or of La Embarbascada. The lagoon works, in this sense, as a mirror of the island's history.