Carmen Rosa Toledo López
The Grande Dame crown went to a candidate who captivated the jury and the audience with her elegance, feeling and festive spirit, as well as by a delicate design that she defended robustly on stage.
Carla Benítez
Her symbolic fantasy costume, entitled “History”, weighing more than 300 kilos and covered with rhinestones and feathers (over 10,000 of them), was a declaration of intent in itself. And just as its designer, Kevin Rodríguez, hads planned, Carla Benítez González not only became the 50th rose on her magnificent dress, but also the 50th Carnival Queen of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the year it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Carla knows what it’s like to wear a crown, having won the Maspalomas Carnival Queen Gala in 2023 with another Kevin Rodríguez creation. However, she admitted that Santa Catalina Park and her city’s Carnival Queen Gala made a great impression on her.
Drag La Tacones, Kevin Jiménez
For La Tacones, the winner’s sash comes after taking part in the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival for four consecutive years.
With the backing of PhysioÉlite Physiotherapy Clinic and José Halcón Floats, Taco captivated the audience and the jury and took the winner’s sash in a remarkable contest in which he was also awarded the prize for best design on Preselection night.
Kevin Jiménez, the alter ego of Drag La Tacones, was already wearing platform boots in his mother’s womb. Or so he claimed, with a laugh, after becoming the winning Drag Queen in the year the city’s most important festivity celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Conchi Rivero Barrera
Conchi Rivero Barrera was proclaimed Grand Dame of the Carnival of ‘The Olympic Games’. The candidate from the Ciudad Alta District triumphed in the gala with a design by Isidro Javier Pérez Mateo and Daniel Rivero Suárez called ‘Crisol de oro’ (Crucible of Gold). The Carnival’s senior crown once again attracted a large audience to the stage in Santa Catalina Park.
Drag Ármek, Pedro Llomar Miranda González
Ármek was the Drag Queen of the 2025 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival. The Olympic Carnival saw Pedro Llomar Miranda González, the candidate from the Jared Pascual Beauty Salon, climb to the top of the podium, performing his show “La belleza de lo oculto” (“Hidden Beauty”), with costume design by Nancy Henríquez González.
An avid Carnival devotee, grateful for his parents’ support, courteous, responsible and very professional: that is Llomar, the champion of a contest in which he shone with a number that was both entertaining and thoughtful. His alter ego, Ármek, triumphed in Santa Catalina with an exercise in personal achievement: “In the end, you have to take off your mask and be yourself.”
Coral Gutiérrez
The most Olympic gala of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival concluded with the crowning of its eagerly awaited Queen. The winner turned out to be Coral Gutiérrez, manager of the Restaurante El Centro in Guayadeque, who was radiant in her fantasy costume “Bohemia”, designed by Kilian Betancor Falcón. When the time came to share her feelings, she admitted she was living her own personal “Disney fairy tale”. Betancor expressed enormous satisfaction at having achieved a triumph that he had already savoured a few years before in the Drag Queen Gala.
Eva Costa Santiago
Eva Costa Santiago received the title of the Carnival Grand Dame. For a whole year she will show off a reign which she achieved thanks to the Light of the Adriatic costume designed by Isidro Pérez Mareo and Daniel Rivero Suárez in representation of the Ciudad Alta District.
Katia Gutiérrez Thime
Katia Gutiérrez Thime was crowned queen of the “Carnivals of the World” under the affectionate gaze of her predecessor, Lola Ortiz, and that of the queens of great and renowned carnival celebrations: Rio de Janeiro, Venice, Barranquilla and Santa Cruz de Tenerife: it was a historic occasion for all of these queens to gather together in the Gran Canaria capital.
The ”Midas’s Treasure” costume, designed by Manuel Encinoso and sponsored by Dormitorum, fulfilled the prophecy and took Katia directly to the throne.
Drag Elektra, Iván Sánchez Pérez
It was third time lucky: Drag Elektra became the Drag Queen of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on the third try. She did it with the show entitled “It’s outrageous”, sponsored by MOW hotels, with a design by Nancy Henríquez González, and she achieved the prize exactly ten years after competing for the first time: her first attempt, in 2014, didn’t reach the classifying round, and in 2019 she got through the pre-selection.
The hum of the presentation of her fable in the classifying stage must have been convincing because even before her number began, the ovation made itself heard in the Belén María venue, to the extent that the other contenders chanted her alias right before the name of the 2024 Drag Queen was revealed. Days earlier, in the classifying stage, Elektra had won the special jury’s prize for the best costume design.
Tomás Pérez
Tomás Pérez is considered one of the Carnival's best lyricists and many people speak of him as the father of Gran Canaria's Murga style. As well as being the founder and director of the Afilarmónica Los Nietos De Kika, from Arucas, he set a style and his good work encouraged the creation of Murgas in many of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria quarters, with his lyrics packed with irony, criticism and pasodobles.
He died on 29 February 1996, shortly after the Carnival "sardine's burial" (final act on Ash Wednesday) for that year. Since then, the Carnival awards the Tomás Pérez Prize for Best Lyrics during the Murga contest in memory of this great Murga artist.