La Palma’s first winter mini-festival will be sponsored by Ruido fanzine (to present issue 15 of Ruido) and the cultural association Mareando (to present the association’s activities.) It will take place in the Plaza de España de S/C de La Palma on Saturday 8th January starting at 10 pm. The local groups, Soulamente Soulo and Mojo Blues will perform, and they’ll be various cultural stands, tapas, activities for children and…
Although Father Christmas does visit Spanish children, he’s a new arrival. Traditionally the presents arrive on the morning of January 6th, when the three kings visit baby Jesus. This is why the sales haven’t really started yet – Christmas isn’t over here. And on the evening of the 5th, they ride in procession through most of the major towns and villages in Spain. In previous years we’ve usually gone to…
The taxis on La Palma have their own website in English and Spanish (with German coming shortly). It lists all their various services. Obviously you can call a normal taxi for a single trip, but they also have 8-seater taxis for bigger groups, and at least one taxi which can take a wheelchair. They have a series of standard tours, which are great if you want to see more than…
You may remember the fuss in 2001 when two geologists, Steven Ward and Simon Day, announced their theory that the west side of the island of La Palma would collapse one day, creating a mega-tsunami that would cross the entire Atlantic and still be anything up to 25 metres high when it hit New York, and indeed everything from Newfoundland in Canada to Recife in Brazil. These days, almost all…
Cruise ships regularly call into Santa Cruz de La Palma, and I thought people might like suggestions on what to see while they’re here. Of course it might be useful to people staying elsewhere on the island, too. The Tourist Information Office is a distinctive glass building, right outside the entrance to the port, and the staff are very good. But it does tend to attract longish queues when a…
Tourists sometimes go nuts trying to find the village of Breña Baja, or Fuencaliente. There’s a really simple reason why they can’t find them. They don’t exist. Breña Baja and Fuencaliente are municipalities, and their town halls are in the villages of San Jose and Los Canarios, respectively. It like driving all over the south east of England, looking for the town of Sussex. The map shows the 14 municipalities…