The Olympic Carnival enters the week of the Queen
The Carnival dedicated to the Olympic Games in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria enters a week with a clear leading lady: its Queen. Friday 28 February, at 9 pm local time, is the big night. From that moment, nine candidates will compete in one of the major galas on the programme. It is a classic event in the city’s festivities that has been present since the Carnival was revived at the end of the 1970s. And it closes an extended weekend that concludes on Carnival Tuesday.
The Carnival Queen evening, broadcast on local, national and international television via Television Española and Televisión Canaria, captures the attention of the public who follow the festival, to enjoy the work of the best designers of the costumes displayed by the candidates on stage, pure carnivalesque art that the hopefuls wear as they parade in pursuit of their dream: to be crowned Queen of the festivities and become their ambassador.
The night always provides spectacular images, both of the show taking place on stage and of the display of imagination when it comes to dressing the young candidates. Though few are more emotional than those of the final coronation, the moment when the new monarch takes her sceptre and is proclaimed in front of an audience that always fills Santa Catalina Park to capacity on these occasions.
Carnival Nights
The election of the Queen marks the start of an intense weekend in the setting for the celebrations. And on the same evening it is followed by the first of the Carnival Nights, which takes place in Plaza Manuel Becerra, Plaza de La Luz and Calle Eduardo Benot: in other words, in an area of influence of the working-class district of La Isleta, the cradle of the modern Carnival in the capital of Gran Canaria.
More than a hundred refreshment stalls take over this area for the enjoyment of a crowd of revellers in fancy dress, experiencing the most authentic Carnival: the one in the street. This is when the popular festivities really come into their own. In this first instalment, they will last from 11 pm to 4 am.
And the fun will continue at midday the following day, Saturday 1 March, with an Inaugural Parade, starting in Doramas Park and heading along Calle Pío XII, in the Ciudad Jardín district, until it reaches the Central Market, in the Alcaravaneras neighbourhood. The winners of the contests held up to this point (the Junior Queen , the Grande Dame and the Carnival Queen herself ) lead one of the first popular processions on the programme, in an ideal event for entering into the spirit of the Carnival and enjoying it as it passes.
Daytime Carnival
Shortly afterwards, from 2 pm to 10 pm, the Daytime Carnival opens in the city, in Santa Catalina Park and Plaza de Canarias. This is another of those occasions for enjoying the music and the atmosphere, in a great celebration of fancy dress. And at a more suitable time of day for a family audience, although on these occasions all kinds of revellers answer the call.
Saturday night will also be a Carnival Night, a bit longer than the first: from 9 pm to 5 am on Sunday morning, in the same setting of La Isleta and with the same enthusiasm.
The Choreographic Festival
One of the events that attracts the largest turnout is reserved for Sunday 2 March, with a huge family audience in attendance. This is the Choreographic Festival, which takes place from 12 noon in Santa Catalina Park, with performances by hundreds of children and young people in groups wearing fancy costumes giving of their best in enthusiastic dance routines. This is one of those times of great comings and goings and expectancy on the festival stage, and it is one of the biggest draws in the city’s Carnival.
The week concludes on that same Sunday with another major event: the International Body-Painting Contest. This competition, which is well worth seeing, has acquired worldwide prestige and attracts participants from a number of places in Spain and abroad. The standard is impressive and it is undoubtedly one of the great attractions of the modern Carnival, both for the local audience and for visitors.
Carnival Tuesday
That is not the end of the long weekend of festivities, which extends until Carnival Tuesday. Before this, however, there will be another night of revelry, on Monday 3 February in Plaza Manuel Becerra, Plaza de La Luz and Calle Eduardo Benot, from 8 pm to 5 am, continuing the succession of nights in a great festive sequence .
And on Carnival Tuesday itself it will be the youngest participants who take centre stage. Because that is the date, 4 March, chosen to celebrate the Children’s Parade, which starts from Plaza Manuel Becerra, in La Isleta, at 12 noon and concludes in Avenida José Mesa y López, one of the main open-air shopping areas in the capital of Gran Canaria.
The floats and the children’s groups are responsible for taking on a leading role in this event, which is attended by a large number of spectators, mostly families. Another designed for the same audience is the Family Carnival, which will be held afterwards in Santa Catalina Park and Plaza de Canarias, from 2 pm to 10 pm. This will certainly involve more music, more festivity and more costumes, on a day that is traditionally always one of the great highlights of the programme. And there will still be more Carnival to come.
A week of murgas and comparsas, ending with pets and the Grande Dame
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.
The proclamation parade reminds the city that Carnival has started
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 5 February, 2025. Santa Catalina Park shows off the “Olympic Games” Carnival stage to locals and visitors, an imposing structure connecting the allegory of the past, the classic Games whose origin dates back to Greece and the temple of Zeus, and the modern Games, with a magnificent athletics track and a censer where the flame of Prometheus will light up the events featured on lpacarnaval.com
And it is exactly towards that stage that the first Carnival event will take us, with a proclamation parade which, on Saturday 8 February, at 8 pm, will leave from Calle Juan Rejón in the popular neighbourhood of La Isleta, continuing through Albareda until it ends up in the heart of Carnival. This parade will fill its route with rhythm and colour, with features that remind us that the party has started, a party that will be lively right through to 16 March, when it comes to an end with the Burial of the Sardine.
After the parade, from 9 pm onwards, the starring role is taken by the voice of a Carnival legend, Orlando Jiménez, the president of the veteran Murga group Los Nietos de Kika, a local group from the town of Arucas which, like all Murgas, questions current affairs and goes over them in a humorous tone. And to keep spirits up, there’ll be plenty of music. El Combo Dominicano band will be delivering all-time favourite sounds from the stage.
And a day later, this same Carnival nucleus will be the epicentre of fun and brazenness. Because, on Sunday, at 9.30 pm, the Adult Costume Competition starts, an event which has seven people competing in the individual category, and ten groups competing with costumes and choreographies worked out between friends.
This will be just the beginning of a Carnival which has so much in store. The second week will start off on 14 February, which is when St Valentine’s Day is celebrated. And the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival will celebrate the day with one of the events that stirs up most passions and love: the Drag Queen Preselection, where 25 candidates dream of their great ticket to the Drag Queen Gala.
That second Carnival-goers’ encounter will devote Saturday 15 February to children, with the selection of the Junior Throne Queen. Although both boys and girls can compete, in 2025 it’s eight little girls who have signed up for the encounter. The Junior Throne brings all the little ones together in the enclosure. There’s no doubt that it’s a party designed for families to enjoy themselves together, and which guarantees the future of Carnival. Sunday 16 February is for families too: this Carnival doesn’t neglect its new blood, and on 16 February, from 6 pm onwards, the Junior Murgas, little groups of kids who begin their humorous questioning of the system, come out to give one hundred per cent on the Santa Catalina stage.
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria welcomes Olympic Games themed Carnival festivities
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 27 January, 2025. - This is how it was announced the day the last edition came to a close and, with 2025 under way, Carnival has everything ready in order to celebrate a fiesta which will have plenty of clever allusions to the world of sport.
The machinery of this Fiesta of International Tourist Interest never stops. The year-round preparation shapes a schedule of activities with room for absolutely everyone, and for both the local public and outsiders. Events for children, for families, to enjoy with friends… Many, almost all, are open to all and free. Others, although fewer, are for ticket-holders only. These are the galas when the Carnival Queen and the Drag Queen are chosen, as well as the Drag Queen pre-selection - such is the enthusiasm generated by the world of drag that this earlier round is also ticketed - or the final phase of a competition which gives a prize to the wit and humour of the Murgas, groups which analyse the reality or the activity of the political class with impudence and irony.
These tickets are usually made available to the public via official ticketing platforms and at the box office itself. This is always some days before the actual events, when the enclosure has been measured. And the tickets disappear fast. Especially for anything concerning the Drag Queen, a persona which stamps character on the Gran Canaria capital’s Carnival. An icon of the mischief and tolerance which define the festivities.
The complete programme and the description of each event have been on this web for months, so that anyone visiting the webpage can use the information to trace out a road map for themselves. Yesterday and today’s leading players also have a place on the website. Along with summaries of other editions, and curiosities which will help the visitor understand these Gran Canarian festivities.
The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival embraces its legions of followers and also those from elsewhere who want to become a part of the Carnival sensation. To start with, a large stage is built, the watchword in stages which stands apart from all the rest. This stage is set up in the open air, a real work of ephemeral architecture which is provided for the galas and competitions while highlighting the year’s theme. The 2025 stage will be much more than an Olympus, it will be the temple which thousand of Carnival-goers will visit as they present themselves to their events with the firm ambition of becoming a part of their history.
The island’s capital thus reminds you that, from 8 February to 15 March, Carnival will be the point for this encounter with fantasy, fun and abandon. The city also reminds you that, within that official opening announcement in the evening of 8 February, with the speech and the parade to introduce the leading players, and the burning of the sardine on the beach, on Sunday 16 March, the symbol of farewell and rebirth, the world of Carnival will hold dozens of international concerts, with particular stress on Latin music. Stars like Maluma, Olga Tañón, La India, Guaynaa and a long list of big names from the world of salsa and reggaeton are part of the list of musical performers who will bring the beat to Carnival-goers both during the day and at night.
For anyone who wants to immerse themself in the universe of Carnival, the organisers give you the same advice as the anthem which the iconic Sindo Saavedra gave the festivities: “get into your best costume”.
Carnival burns the Sardine and announces an Olympic festival for 2025
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 20 February 2024. The Sardine burned in the waters of Las Canteras to bring Carnival 2024 to a close. The Carnivals of the World bade farewell, to be followed immediately afterwards by the announcement of the theme that will set the mood for the 2025 festivities: the Olympics. This subject, chosen by the public in an online vote, became the final centre of attention on the last day of this year’s carnival programme.
More than 25,000 people said goodbye to a Carnival unprecedented in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In the 21st century, at least: “The Carnivals of the World” were those of the festival in the popular district of La Isleta, where the main events on the programme and the celebrations of the Daytime Carnival and Carnival Nights were concentrated. The crowd last Sunday, 18 February, dominated, as was to be expected, by the deafening wail of the weeping widows, accompanied the procession of the Sardine to Las Canteras beach for its traditional cremation. There the fish burned and the festival was over until 2025.
Beyond the massive presence of carnival-goers, the Carnival Queen, Katia Gutiérrez Thime, the Drag Queen, Elektra, the Junior Queen, Liah Guardia Suárez, and the Grande Dame, Eva Costa Santiago, the farewell ceremony of Carnival 2024 had a marked sense of continuity: of connection with the immediate future, with the announcement, in what was the last act of these festivities (or the first of the next ones), of what the theme to set the mood for the next celebrations will be.
An Olympic Carnival
The 2025 Carnival of the Olympics will revolve around an event as universal as the carnival itself, and one that is perfectly in tune with the open and cosmopolitan character of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Since the original Olympic Games organized in ancient Greece, but also from their revival in 1896 in the spirit expressed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, this great world sports gathering has periodically brought together representatives of different cultures under the banner of universal Olympic values.
The Games are, in fact, a great “arena” for fancy dress: whether as a discobolus or athlete crowned with laurel, or as a modern sportsperson, in any of the Olympic disciplines. Athletics, swimming, team sports, summer and winter... the possibilities here will be endless for the imaginative carnival-goers in the capital of Gran Canaria, as well as for the designers of the costumes of candidates for the festival crowns and the various Carnival groups. What could be better than an Olympic Carnival for celebrations with an international dimension that have always been gold medal material and have never been lacking in allusions and references to sport?
A Drag Queen apotheosis at the end of “Carnivals of the World”
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Monday 12 February, 2024. If there is a hallmark which defines modern Carnival in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, that will be platforms. The 21st Century Carnival in the Gran Canaria capital is marked definitively by the appearance of the Drag Queens. With over two decades of galas behind them, they have emerged as a really singular feature, decisive in ensuring that the city’s carnival celebrations achieved the status of Fiesta of International Tourist Interest.
In this edition of the Carnivals of the World, which for 2024 has taken the programme of events back to the La Isleta neighbourhood (the quarter which brought the fiesta back after Franco’s dictatorship), the grand Drag Queen Gala occupies a special date: Friday 16 February, on the main stage located in Belén María Square. Starting at 21:30, thirteen aspiring contestants will compete in this packed setting for the Drag sceptre, with the show being broadcast both nationally and internationally. It’s a great day for the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival!
After the Gala, the concerts and musical shows will continue on this same stage, and on the other two stages located nearby: eclectic events for a range of audiences, on one of the most important Carnival Nights, with the crowds in their costumes enjoying these celebrations to the full and with total intensity. This is the Carnival you find out on the streets of the Gran Canaria capital.
A display, the popular one, which will carry on marking the final weekend of the programme. And thus, on Saturday 17 February, from 16:00 onwards, the Grand Parade will leave from the La Isleta neighbourhood itself to wind through the centre of the city until it reaches San Telmo Park, on the threshold of the city’s historic centre. Over a hundred floats carrying people in costume, Murga groups, Comparsa groups and, of course, the Queens and Drag Queens, make up a superb parade which the Gran Canaria capital experiences each year, like an apotheosic festive celebration, where the outstanding features are costumes, shamelessness and transgression.
The last Saturday on the programme doesn’t end there, by any stretch of the imagination. Concerts are the main draw again on the last Carnival Night on the three stages in La Isleta, with a special appearance on the billboards, that of the international performer Manuel Turizo (23:00), a great attraction for the audience on this night of vast becostumed crowds.
To bid our farewell to the Carnivals of the World there is still one more day of widows in the sun, in the Daytime Carnival summoned to the same zone of the city (from 12 noon), until the Burial of the Sardine leaves for the Las Canteras Beach, at 19:30, for the traditional burning of the fish to mark the death of each Carnival. This is a day dominated by hysterical and shameless professional mourners and their grief, in an amusing mourning ritual which lends its tears to the farewell to the fiestas.
That said, this Carnival won’t end without leaving us the theme which will run through its successor in 2025. Starting at 21:00, the organisers will announce the allegory that has been chosen by popular vote, which will mean that the general public can get ahead in deciding what costumes will be best suited for next year and, in particular, give the Murga and Comparsa Groups and the contenders for the crowns enough time to get to work on the costumes they will wear on stage 12 months hence.
Carnival has a date with its Queen in La Isleta
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Monday, 5 February, 2024. It was in March 1976, so long ago now. At that time, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, like the entire country, was living through times of social and political uncertainty. Only a few months earlier, the dictator Francisco Franco had died, and there was still a way to go in the democratic process which would give the people back their civil liberties. One of those liberties, forbidden up until then, was the right to celebrate Carnival; this had carried on in secret in the city under the alias of the Winter Fiestas, and in one neighbourhood, La Isleta (between the Port and the Canteras Beach) there was always a clandestine celebration. Until the moment in that turbulent winter when the people there claimed back their Carnival, their parade… and their Carnival Queen Gala.
And they managed it, that day, in the park beside La Luz Castle, which today houses the Martín Chiniro Foundation for Art and Thought, and five centuries ago was the bastion of the city’s defence against pirate attacks such as that of Francis Drake. A young girl from the town of Arucas, Rosa Delia González, was the winner of a contest with five candidates, which opened the door to a long history of Carnival galas in the Gran Canaria capital.
Since then, the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival Queen Gala has been celebrated as the great iconic event on the programme of festivities. And this will happen once again this Friday, 9 February (21:30) in La Isleta! Because in 2024 the festivities are returning to where they started, at least if we’re talking about the city’s modern Carnival. This time, 13 candidates will compete for a throne which the designers of their characteristic costumes long for. Impossible spectacular dresses which are the watchword for the celebrations.
The selection of the Queen of “Carnivals of the World”, which is the theme running through the fiestas this year, is the gateway to nothing less than a huge Carnival weekend in the city, with the epicentre in La Isleta. To start with, on that very Friday, after the crowning, it’s “Carnival Night” (from 23.30 onwards), in no fewer than three locations (the main space and two more in the surrounding neighbourhood) and there will be different musical shows.
The same formula as in La Isleta, with different performers, will be repeated on Saturday, 10 February (from 20:00), although the party won’t stop in the meantime in the city. At 12:00 (midday) on Saturday 10 February, the Grand Parade of Carnival Groups will leave from Doramas Park and Calle Pío XII, in the central neighbourhood of Ciudad Jardín, and head for the Central Market, within the Alcaravaneras neighbourhood; participating in the Procession will be the traditional Carnival characters, the different groups (Murgas and Comparsas), the Children’s Queen, the Grand Dame and the Queen and the 13 finalists of the Drag Queen Gala programmed for 16 February. In the period between the parade and night-time, La Isleta will continue to vibrate with a Daytime Carnival from 16:00 onwards with children’s Murgas, Comparsas and other musical performances.
On Sunday 11 February, family audiences have their multitudinous date as always with the children’s choreographic encounter, on the main stage of La Isleta, when numerous groups of children present their Carnival routines, along with their costumes. This is the day’s big feature, from 11:00 onwards. On the following day, with Carnival Monday in full swing, there are new invitations to watch concerts, from 19:00 onwards, on two stages. Among these, the main stage is the setting for a presentation of the options in the running to be the theme for the 2025 Carnival. The theme chosen will be announced after the Burial of the Sardine on 18 February.
Lastly, Carnival Tuesday is the great day for families and the younger members of the public, with the Children’s Parade programmed at 11:00, and a Carnival Tuesday which, from 15:00 onwards in La Isleta and on various stages, will be the setting for musical and festive offerings for audiences of all ages.
Murga and comparsa groups take over the Carnival
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 29 January 2024. Murgas and comparsas embody the essence of people’s creative expression in the Carnival of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Murga groups sing critical songs about local news, and comparsa groups are known for their colourful dances and choreographies. Both experience their main event—the competitions—in the second week of the Carnivals of the World. This year the host of these thoroughly traditional festival groups will be the stage set up in the district of La Isleta.
Up to 20 male and female murga groups are competing in the 2024 Carnival held in the capital of Gran Canaria. Four evenings have been reserved in the programme for this competition, which will present prizes to groups from the city and the rest of the island of Gran Canaria for their performances, costumes and lyrics. The three preliminary phases to decide the eight murga finalists will be held on 29, 30 and 31 January (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) from 8.45 p.m. The groups put through to the final will compete on Saturday, 3 February from 9 p.m. in La Isleta. The performances fill the stage for hours, with each group attracting a loyal fanbase eager to watch their favourites.
The comparsa competition will take place the day before the murga final. On Friday, 2 February, at 9.30 p.m., five groups are competing for the performance and costume prizes at one of the most classic events in the Carnival programme of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. These lively groups always bring plenty of colour and rhythm to the evening stage.
The week’s competitions end with the Dog Carnival on Sunday, 4 February (12 p.m.) and the Grand Dame Gala (9 p.m.). The canine event usually attracts a small dog-crazy crowd keen to dress up their pets even if they aren’t participating. This Carnival event, which has featured in the programme for over a decade, is a great day out for dogs and family spectators alike.
The festival’s senior Gala is also a celebration with a lot of history behind it. Up to seven candidates are parading in 2024 to obtain the Grand Dame sceptre by displaying the handiwork of expert carnival designers, who often have Carnival Queen Gala experience.
The Carnival Night, another of the main events in these Carnivals of the World, will also take place in the second festival week in La Isleta. The recurring event on Friday, 2 February will bring a taste of what’s still to come.
The Carnival of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is coming home
The 2024 Carnival of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is going to be special because it’s returning to its working-class roots. The district of La Isleta, built next to Las Palmas Port at one end of Las Canteras Beach, kept the spirit of the festival alive when events such as these were prohibited during the years when Franco was the dictator of Spain. The Carnival disguised itself at that time as a winter festival, as celebrations in social clubs and as clandestine gatherings. Just a few months after Franco died, its residents advocated for the official return of the festivities; it was 1976 and there was already a parade and even a Carnival Queen Gala. The Carnival was reborn with unstoppable energy.
As the city is currently undergoing an urban transformation process, which will also revitalise the area surrounding Santa Catalina Park—the heart of the modern Carnival in the Gran Canarian capital—there is no space to hold the festival. That’s why the Carnival programme is going back to the district of La Isleta in 2024, one year after being declared a Fiesta of International Tourism Interest. This is where the main galas, competitions and festival evenings will take place from 25 January to 18 February. The festivities are going back to the streets where it all began with the same verve and vitality as always.
At the other end of the city in Vegueta, the original settlement of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the Carnival has already been launched with the presentation of up to 52 candidates for the crowns of Queen, Drag Queen, Grand Dame and the Children’s Throne. Their costumes are based on a special theme, which changes every year. In 2024, it’s Carnivals of the World to pay homage to celebrations in other parts of the globe. A draw was held to decide the order of participation of the 10 candidates for the Children’s Gala, six for Grand Dame, 13 for Queen and 23 for the Drag Queen Preselection, which will decide the drag queens that will classify for the final grand gala.
The Drag Queen Preselection will close on Sunday, 28 January during the first weekend of the Carnival. As always, no cameras will be present, and neither will it be televised. Only the audience attending this event will be able to enjoy a first glimpse of the drag queens in the Carnivals of the World. It’s the most international side of the Carnival of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
But first the festival will be announced in La Isleta by some traditional components of its liveliest evenings: the Latin and folk music bands, who will give the opening speech on Thursday, 25 January after the parade.
The Carnival nights will really get going on the Friday and Saturday, 26 and 27 January, after the first two competitions in the programme. Friday will be the costume competition, which always attracts a large group of carnival and fancy-dress enthusiasts. The group category is especially worth seeing as the competitors tap into the spirit of carnival camaraderie to appear on stage in elaborate costumes.
Saturday, 27 January will also see the start of the family Carnival programme, which is always a highlight, with a Gala taking place to decide who will sit on the Children’s Throne. It’s another of the main events in a very special Carnival year, one of the most remarkable in recent times.
The Drag Queen Gala introduces the last weekend of Carnival before the farewell parade
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1 March 2023. 3 March is the day: the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Drag Queen Gala will celebrate its 25th anniversary. It marks a quarter of a century over which the Drag Queen throne aspirants have not only gained great popularity among the general public in the main festivities of the city, but also in which the event has become the unique sign of identity of a Carnival that has just been designated a “Fiesta of International Tourist Interest” by the Spanish state.
Up to 14 participants will compete for the sceptre that marks out the Drag Queen in a Gala featuring a star performance by American pop rock singer Anastacia. The event will be broadcast on television and social media (@lpacarnaval) for the whole planet to see. The Gala on Friday 3 March (9.15 pm, GMT+0) is a big event within the universe of Drag, an important date for Carnival and a unique show for spectators from outside the island. With tickets sold out for the show in the 2023 purpose-built Studio 54 in Santa Catalina Park, the social networks, using hashtag #draglpgc, will be the main hosts for comments on this great contest of the platforms. So much so, that year after year it climbs the ranks to become #TT Worldwide.
The Drag Queen coronation opens the last weekend of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Carnival in 2023. That same night, various concerts will take place on the two stages around the Plaza de la Música, located at the far western edge of the famous Las Canteras beach. There, a crowd of people in costumes will once more gather to enjoy yet another dose of Carnival, to be followed, on Saturday 4 March, by the celebration of the Grand Parade as it makes its way all around the city.
The Grand Parade
This parade, a historic feature in the programme, has been a real symbol, conveying the character of the Carnival of the capital of Gran Canaria ever since 1976, when, less than a year after Franco’s death and in the midst of the downfall of the dictatorship, the citizens recovered a secular tradition for their city. The tradition of Carnival, fancy dress, irreverence and freedom.
The Parade, with its long line of floats (over a hundred) where many celebrate this evening with different types of music and to different beats, leaves at 5 pm from the iconic Castillo de La Luz (the former fortress which defended the city from Barbary pirate raids) and continues along the whole length of the city centre until coming to a stop in San Telmo Park, the gateway to the historic quarter of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Triana and Vegueta, the earliest heart of the city). The whole event is about partying and having fun, two qualities that are never missing from the organisers’ agenda. The night ends on a high with concerts in El Rincón, next to the Plaza de la Música, and in San Telmo.
Sunday celebration in Santa Catalina
Sunday 5 March sees no slowing down in the partying. Starting at noon, a Daytime Carnival will again be held in the area around the Plaza de la Música and Santa Catalina, as well as in San Telmo. At 3 pm an international Carnival event with the Colombian musician Carlos Vives will take place on the stage in Santa Catalina Park. The artist will be the star of the last day of this year’s Carnival before the Burial of the Sardine retinue sets off from the same location at around 7 pm for Las Canteras. There, after arriving accompanied by the cortege of mourning widows and costumed participants, the fish will go up in flames and fireworks will be set off to bid farewell to the Carnival until its return in 2024.