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The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival, designated a Fiesta of National Tourist Interest, becomes the epicentre of activity for almost a whole month for a city with a different way of living through the winter. People living here are passionate about the event, and it works its charms on visitors who can take advantage of the dates to join the celebrations in the street, and who also attend the great galas in the programme. The Carnival Queen Gala or the famous Drag Queen Gala, followed worldwide, are the identifying features of a fiesta, which, all the same, also sets aside plenty of space in the programme for family events. Indeed, the little ones have a whole calendar of entertainment over these days in the Gran Canaria capital, immersed in its own Carnival culture.

The 2019 festivities, themed around A Night in Rio, in tribute to the Rio de Janeiro carnival celebrations, as a symbol of openness, freedom and integration. And, like every previous year, the schedule planned by the organisers offers a great range of things to do for younger carnival-goers. On the one hand, there are acts which are specifically designed for children. And on the other, there are different events suitable for people of all ages, which can be experienced in the city as a family. This is another characteristic feature of this Carnival which is unique, contemporary and belongs to a city which is not only transformed by Carnival but also transforms itself for Carnival. In this case, from 15 February until 10 March 2019.

The first weekend with children at centre stage

On the first day, when the opening proclamation takes place in Plaza de Santa Ana, right in the historic centre, families can get an advance taste of the festivities with a musical parade proclaiming the start of Carnival, as it passes through the city’s oldest streets. This is only an appetiser for everything that will take place later around the Parque Santa Catalina, where each year a stage is built (designed according to the allegory that the citizens choose each year as the theme for the Carnival): this is where all the great spectacles of the festivities take place.

The first, Saturday 16 February, with the junior comparsas – stage shows – contest (7 pm), where visitors can see for themselves how the Carnival’s youngest talents experience the festivities. On the following day, from 11 am onwards, Santa Catalina brings together a multitude of junior groups as they celebrate their own fancy dress festival. Their families cheer them on from the audience… as do a good crowd of tourists who pass by the stage on their visits to the city: guests at its hotels and apartments, day-trippers from the south of the island… or people on the cruises that have put in at the nearby Santa Catalina Dock, and who are becoming regulars at these events in the park.

Daytime and Pet Carnival

The first full week of the programme is devoted to the murgas and comparsas competitions, although on the Saturday and Sunday, families travelling to the city have other opportunities to join the celebrations. Among these is the Vegueta Daytime Carnival; it’s a good idea to go early if you’re with children, before the multitudinous crowd takes over the streets again. This is the programme for Saturday 23 February: the first of the daytime fiestas that fill so much of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival Schedule, which repeats these celebrations in the sunlight on two Sundays, 24 February  and 3 March, and on Carnival Tuesday (5 March) in Santa Catalina Park, and on Saturday 2 March in and around Triana’s Calle Mayor, in the historic heart of the city once again.

Sunday 24 February is also a chance for the little ones to get to know the Dog Carnival (12 pm). The pets in their costumes, together with their owners, gather at Santa Catalina to compete on stage in a unique competition, followed from the stands with the same spirit. What a gathering of Carnival dogs, showing off their costumes in this singular social happening.

The kids’ throne

On that same Sunday, 24, the Parque Santa Catalina is taken over by the candidates for Junior Queen or King (7 pm). A competition with very young contenders for the junior crown of the Carnival. It is no insignificant matter: many of the designers who compete in the big gala with their spectacular designs are also the designers behind the kids’ costumes. This gala is closely followed by the families, and reveals to the visitor the importance in the fiesta of the Queen’s dresses.

A Tuesday for the little ones

On Carnival Tuesday, 5 March, the Gran Canaria capital’s Carnival schedule dedicates a great day to kids. It’s the day of the Junior Parade, which leaves from Castillo de La Luz at 5 pm, and ends in Santa Catalina. It’s the festivities’ great junior procession, where groups with the youngest Carnival participants take part, alongside floats and a multitude of families in fancy dress. The parade ends with a great children’s party in the Parque Santa Catalina, with musical performances. Without a doubt, a great opportunity for the little ones to understand the importance of the Carnival and to join in the fun of the great fancy dress party.

A popular celebration, a costume party, and a date with the grandest shows. Every year, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival celebrates its galas on an iconic stage risen for the occasion in Santa Catalina Park – heart of the city bordered by the Port of La Luz and Las Palmas, and Las Canteras Beach. This 2019, the Gran Canarian capital pays tribute to Brazil’s notorious festivities with its theme, ‘A Night in Rio’, and Santa Catalina becomes the melting pot where these two cities fuse into the set for its most emblematic contests.

Little over two weeks in, the city has already chosen its Carnival Queen, Erika Echuaca Sebe, who was crowned for her ensemble under the fantasy Volar sin Alas (Flying without wings). The elegant candidate, a second-generation immigrant, will represent Las Palmas de Gran Canaria at tourist promotion events overseas along with Pedro Bethencourt Guerra –also known as Drag Chuchi–, the winner of the world-renowned Drag Queen Gala who over the last few years (included 2019) has been a global trending topic on Twitter and in the limelight for fans worldwide thanks to social media and television. It’s no mystery why tickets get sold out so quickly.

Chuchi took the stage with her show Repite mi nombre (Repeat my name), which ultimately gave her the winning sceptre and the right to participate in the Grand Parade that the city celebrates on 9 March. Everyone will be there; even the Carnival Queen and another royal figure that is a living representation of the importance of these festivities in the Gran Canarian capital.

We’re talking about Luisa Lozano, the Grand Dame of the A Night in Rio Carnival, dressed in Stampa do Brasil, a design fit for the 2019 Carnival. The Junior Queen, Náyade Pérez Castro, with her Mexican-themed fantasy, Serenata para usted, cosita linda (A Serenade for You, pretty thing), led the mass Junior Parade on 5 March, Carnival Tuesday. Both junior and veteran are also part of the Carnival’s great hall of fame.

These reigns are a celebration of all the people that participate intensely in Carnival: designers, sponsors, and contestants who have been working all year for the throne. Although, we shouldn’t forget another key figure in Carnival: all the people showing off their best costumes in Santa Catalina.

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 3 February, 2020. The 2020 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival runs from 7 February to 1 March, and will be presented with the introductory tag “Once upon a time…”, which is how most popular tales in universal literature begin.

The world of tales, be they children’s or adults’ tales, based on universal literature or television series which either deconstruct the mythical characters, such as the popular “Once upon a Time”, or invent new universes such as “The Handmaid’s Tale”, will bring colour, fun and an infinite number of possibilities both to fans of popular tales, the work of Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm or Perrault, and to fans of television sagas based on their tales.

Fantasy will no doubt become reality in the carnival costumes of those taking part, in the leit motiv of the shows, and in the great stage which towers over the Santa Catalina Park.

The stage design, by Sergio Macías, makes clear reference to a dozen popular tales, some of which appear in an allegorical fashion and others more circuitously. “Hansel and Gretel”, “Snow White”, “The Wizard of Oz”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Rapunzel”, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” or “Jack and the Beanstalk”, among others, are some of the titles which depict a carefully wrought group scene, with a great wealth of detail.

Above the central body of this staging, a giant magic mirror, inspired by the story of “Snow White”, will turn into a huge screen on which the Carnival characters will make their appearance.

Mere talk of concepts such as integration or accessibility is never enough. And, that’s the truth, it never is. The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival took up the challenge of improvement in this aspect many years ago now: the fact is, this aspect is one of the celebration’s identifying features, defending diversity in the widest possible sense, without distinction of physical or mental condition. Freedom and respect are the values of a celebration characteristic of an open city. Its largest fiesta, with nobody left out before it even starts.

That is why every year the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival celebrates its own Social Integration Gala, where different associations from the island compete in their costumes, in a very emotional contest; the atmosphere is one of solidarity, of great affection… and of an indomitable festive spirit.

This is why the organising team also makes sign language interpreters available at each one of the events (galas and contests) in the Santa Catalina Park, whether they are being broadcast on live television or not. Screens show the translation, so that the Carnival can reach everyone. And everyone wants to take part: Davinia Reyes Lantigua was the candidate presented by the Las Palmas Association for the Deaf (along with Fontanales and the Moya Town Council) for the Gala for 2019 Carnival Queen.

In each of these contests and galas, space is set aside in the first row for persons with reduced mobility, to enable them to enjoy these great moments in the Carnival diary. They also take an even more active part in the celebrations: this is the case with Silvia Arbelo González, candidate in the 2019 costume contest dressed as Apárcame el drama que el carnaval me llama! – “Put the Drama away, it’s time for Carnival!”

Equally emotional is the presence in recent years of Drag Trisómico, Héctor Santana: a candidate who has never been held back from participating in the Drag Queen contest by this genetic trisomy 21, which leads to the appearance of Down’s Syndrome. In 2019 he didn’t make it to the grand finale, after a highly contested preselection with 40 participants. Despite this, Trisómico is part of the history of the Gala, and his father is a regular backstage with his son, lending his support to this devotee of the fiesta.

In that same Drag Queen Gala, gender is not a reason to exclude anyone, and the gala is traditionally associated with freedom when it comes to the expression of sexual condition. Norma Ruíz has been the only woman to take part in recent years’ celebrations of the Gala, with very high quality performances. In fact, Drag Noa was the runner-up in the 2019 Drag Queen Gala, in what has been her farewell appearance in the Carnival. This year there was also another female contestant in the preselection: Esther Pérez Ramón, who had already been Carnival Queen, was the first woman to take part in both contests.

In a wider sense of integration, the Carnival has also brought many participants from overseas into the fiesta, as is appropriate for a city whose history links it to Europe, Africa and America in successive waves of immigration. This diversity is plain to see in contests such as the comparsa shows… although the most outstanding example in 2019 has been that of the Carnival Queen, Erika Echuaca Sebe, who comes from a family which emigrated to the Canaries.

In this effort to avoid any type of discrimination, the Carnival organisers have also modified the rules for its Children’s Gala, and this year a boy has competed for the first time with the rest of the female candidates: Xavier Romero Rivero, who in fact won a prize, as the contest’s Master of Honour, alongside the other three Maids of Honour.

These are only a few examples of the true feeling behind this fiesta, and its spirit of freedom and integration. The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival makes every effort to ensure that everyone, without exclusion, feels part of the fiesta.

The Miller Building is what remains to show for an old British agency (Miller & Company), which looked after its vessels at the beginning of the 20th century. Its elegant employees, with their period suits and spectacles, were probably used to dealing with the sailors who tied up at the ever more important neighbouring Port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. But they would probably have gone into shock if they had contemplated the preparations for shows like the one hosted in this building on the night of Monday, 4 March.

On that evening a total of 16 Drag Queens had readied themselves for the famous Gala held each year by the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival. The finalists had survived a demanding first round, with 40 participants. And the tension and the excitement were more than evident inside, next to the stage in the Santa Catalina Park. Make-up, props, dancing bodies, incredibly high platforms and great passion for these fiestas – all of this is what these drag queens displayed, as the stars for more than 20 years now of these celebrations, and the flagship for the tolerance and transgression that these carnival celebrations always uphold.

The grand finale was broadcast internationally by the Nova channel. It was also broadcast on the internet, with its Atresplayer platform, and the regional television platform, Televisión Canaria. For over two hours the Drag Queen Gala was a trending topic worldwide on Twitter (#DragQueenLPGC) and the centre of attention for television viewers and people using the social networks. The show that everyone enjoyed at Santa Catalina was absolutely first class and the competition was fierce.

Pedro Bethencourt Guerra, Drag Chuchi, carried off the winner’s sceptre with a costume called Repite mi nombre (Repeat My Name). Drag Noa (the only woman competing), Drag Qurón, Drag Vulcano and Drag Múlciber were also prizewinning finalists. Eastern cultures, current political affairs, the world of superheroes and children’s tales: these were some of the themes chosen by the drag queens for their provocative dance numbers. And Santa Catalina, after the customary speedy process of selling tickets (the tickets sold out very shortly after going on sale at the box office and over the internet), rose to its feet to applaud a show which boasted the great Carlinhos Brown as the master of ceremonies. Long live the Drag Queen Gala!

A popular celebration, a costume party, and a date with the grandest shows. Every year, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival celebrates its galas on an iconic stage risen for the occasion in Santa Catalina Park – heart of the city bordered by the Port of La Luz and Las Palmas, and Las Canteras Beach. This 2019, the Gran Canarian capital pays tribute to Brazil’s notorious festivities with its theme, ‘A Night in Rio’, and Santa Catalina becomes the melting pot where these two cities fuse into the set for its most emblematic contests.

Little over two weeks in, the city has already chosen its Carnival Queen, Erika Echuaca Sebe, who was crowned for her ensemble under the fantasy Volar sin Alas (Flying without wings). The elegant candidate, a second-generation immigrant, will represent Las Palmas de Gran Canaria at tourist promotion events overseas along with Pedro Bethencourt Guerra –also known as Drag Chuchi–, the winner of the world-renowned Drag Queen Gala who over the last few years (included 2019) has been a global trending topic on Twitter and in the limelight for fans worldwide thanks to social media and television. It’s no mystery why tickets get sold out so quickly.

Chuchi took the stage with her show Repite mi nombre (Repeat my name), which ultimately gave her the winning sceptre and the right to participate in the Grand Parade that the city celebrates on 9 March 9. Everyone will be there; even the Carnival Queen and another royal figure that is a living representation of the importance of these festivities in the Gran Canarian capital.

We’re talking about Luisa Lozano, the Grand Dame of the A Night in Rio Carnival, dressed in Stampa do Brasil, a design fit for the 2019 Carnival. The Junior Queen, Náyade Pérez Castro, with her Mexican-themed fantasy, Serenata para usted, cosita linda (A Serenade for You, pretty thing), led the mass Junior Parade on 5 March, Carnival Tuesday. Both junior and veteran are also part of the Carnival’s great hall of fame.

These reigns are a celebration of all the people that participate intensely in Carnival: designers, sponsors, and contestants who have been working all year for the throne. Although, we shouldn’t forget another key figure in Carnival: all the people showing off their best costumes in Santa Catalina.