Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, usually called Las Palmas, is the largest city of the Canary Islands, a Spanish autonomous community whose government offices it shares with Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It lies in the northeastern part of the island of Gran Canaria in the Atlantic Ocean, about 150 km west of the African coast, and had 383,516 inhabitants in 2024, which makes it the ninth-largest city in Spain. Juan Rejón founded it on 24 June 1478 as the Real de Las Palmas, in the district now called Vegueta, during the Castilian conquest of the island. Christopher Columbus put in at its port in 1492 to repair the rudder of the Pinta, and the port of Puerto de la Luz, begun in 1883, made the city one of the main ports of the mid-Atlantic. It has a warm desert climate moderated by the cooler Canary Current, with an average annual temperature of 21.2 degrees Celsius, and its best-known public space is the long city beach of Las Canteras.