The stage in Santa Catalina Park is the setting for some intense days of competition, culminating in the Dogs’ Carnival and the Senior Gala

The Olympic Games Carnival will witness an exciting week of competition in Santa Catalina Park. The main festival stage is hosting no fewer than five nights featuring Carnival groups, in intense sessions eagerly awaited by local fans. So from Monday to Saturday the festivities are given over to murgas and comparsas, though on Sunday the spotlight will be on participants of a different kind: the pets and the candidates for the title of Grande Dame.

As many as 22 male and female murgas are competing on 17, 18 and 19 February, from Monday to Wednesday, in the preliminary phases of a competition that is always very hard fought, in which prizes for performance, costumes and lyrics are decided among the groups taking part.

Only eight of them, those chosen by the jury, will participate in the grand final on Saturday 22 February, in an evening session enjoyed with great enthusiasm by the audience in attendance in Santa Catalina.

In between, on Friday 21 February, from 9 pm, six comparsas will vie for the prizes awarded for performance and costumes on the big stage in the park.

These groups have been present since the beginning of the modern Carnival in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and constitute one of its main distinguishing features, with their choreography and their colourful feathered costumes.

To complete the occasion, an exhibition of children’s comparsas has been scheduled before the adult groups appear on stage.

Sunday 23 February is a very special day in the Olympic Games Carnival. At 12 noon the Dogs’ Carnival will be held. In this event, pets and their owners compete in one of the most unusual contests on the programme, which has been an established part of the city’s great festivity in the twenty-first century. Prizes are awarded for the best costumes, on a day of lively celebration with a large popular audience and a substantial number of foreign visitors.

The week culminates, at 9 pm the same Sunday, in the Grande Dame Gala. Some ten candidates, in colourful costumes devised by the Carnival’s best designers, take the stage to show how the senior generation enjoys this kind of festivity in the city.

Admission is free to all the week’s events and all are welcome, subject to capacity.