Vanessa Sancho is originally from Barcelona, but she’s been living in La Palma for the last 18 months. The island’s amazing skies inspired her to produce very good pastel paintings of nebulae. She’s crowdfunding a calendar of her paintings, and I’ve already signed up for one. The calendar is A4 (opens to A3) and each month includes a colour painting, an explanation of what it is an where you can…
On November 3rd 2013 there will be a partial solar eclipse. Well, it’s a total eclipse in some places and an annual eclipse in others, ubt fromteh Canary Islands we get a partial eclipse. 40% of the sun will be covered by the moon at 12:15 pm. From the UK there won’t be anything to see. Do NOT look directly at the sun. You might go blind. There are two…
La Palma has a long history of silk production, going back to the 16th century. In fact, at one time, silk was made in all the Canary Islands, but since the 19th century, El Paso, in the centre of La Palma, is the only place which still produces it. They use an old fashioned, labour-intensive technique, the only place in Europe which still does so. You can see most of…
A remarkable number of the archeological sites on La Palma line up with astronomical calendar events: particularly sunrise or sunset at the solstice or equinox, and the rising and setting of the star Canopus. Since Sunday was the equinox, I went with a group of friends to one of these sites to see the sun rise behind the highest point of the island, the Roque de Los Muchachos. It…
These tomatoes grow wild on La Palma, and they’re about the size of marbles. The locals call them tomates bicacaros and don’t think much of them, perhaps because people used to eat them when they couldn’t afford anything else. I believe that the only reason they don’t sell for some daft price is that they’ve got very thin skins, so they don’t keep. I have some in my garden, and…
The patron saint of Barlovento is Our Lady of the Rosary (la Virgen del Rosario). The Christian victory at the battle of Lepanto in 1571 is attributed to her, soevery two years, Barlovento stages a re-enactment of the battle as part of the annual fiesta. This year, it happens on Sunday 11th at 6 pm. Here’s the fun part: the original sea-battle involved 80,000 men, and the re-enactment consists of…