Día de Canarias - Canaries Day

A group of school children, dressed in typical Canarian costume celebrate Canaries DayMay 30th, is Día de Canarias or Canary Islands Day, which is a holiday locally that celebrates "Canarianess" and remembers the anniversary of the first session of the autonomous Canary Islands Parliament, which took place on May 30th, 1983, when the Canary Islands gained greater powers of self-governance after the return to democracy in Spain.

That parliamentary session took place ten months after the publication of the Estatuto de Autonomía (Statute of Autonomy) in August 1982, which had introduced the concept of a "Canarian nationality", so the obvious comparison for an English speaker is probably the National Day of St. George's Day in England.

The day will be celebrated across the archipelago with concerts, native sports and plenty of popular folk activities, which makes it one of the occasions, as well as the traditional folk festivals, romerías, that provide an excuse to dress up in the "traje de mago" typical Canary Islands costumes.

Each island has it's own costume design, with slight variations in each municipality and the costumes, which cost several hundred euros to have made to quite strict requirements, were actually invented in recent times and rescued from oblivion in the 1970s and 80s, based on the form of dress of the campesinos (country folk, or peasants) of the islands in antiquity.

Above is the coloring of the skirt of the typical Tenerife costume, taken from a painted board in the Plaza de la Pila in Icod de los Vinos.

Canary Islands Symbols

Flag of the Canary IslandsBandera de Canarias
The flag of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands is a vertical tricolour of three equal bands of white, blue, and yellow. The state flag includes the Coat of Arms of the Canary Islands in the central band; the civil flag omits this. The tricolour flag has its origins in the Canarias Libre (Free Canaries) movement of the 1960s. (Source: Wikipedia]

Canary Bird "White means the water of the mountains that brings life to the land, yellow is canary yellow like the singing birds and like the wealth of our colonized fatherland, and the celestial blue is the sky ..."

Story of the Canary Islands Flag

Coat of Arms of the Canary IslandsEscudo de Canarias
The Canary Islands have also had their own official coat of arms since 1982, the description of which is, "On a field of azure there are seven silver islands, organized in rows of two, two, two and one. At the head is a Royal crown in gold, surmounted by a silver ribbon with the word "Oceano" and, as supports, two brown (sable) collared dogs."

The dogs have been used as symbols on the coats of arms of the Canary Islands since the 1700's, first described by José de Viera y Clavijo, but there have been plans more recently for the elimination of both dogs from the shield of the Canary Islands, on official forms and public buildings.

Símbolos de las islas canarias

The legendary Canarian Drago tree (Dracaena draco canariensis): the famous "thousand-year-old Dragon" (although its age is officially 800 years) is one of the most important natural, cultural and historic symbols of the Canary Islands.

El Drago Milenario and the legend

Read more about Día de Canarias in Spanish, or in French: 30 mai, jour des Canaries, where you can also download the Canarian Anthem.

Las islas celebran el Día de Canarias con conciertos y numerosas actividades deportivas y populares