Canary Islands
The Canary Islands or Canaries are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean and the southernmost autonomous community of Spain, located about off the northwest coast of Africa. The archipelago has a population of approximately 2.27 million inhabitants, making it the most populous overseas special territory of the European Union.
The seven main islands, listed from largest to smallest by area, are Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, and El Hierro. The only other inhabited island is La Graciosa, which is administratively dependent on Lanzarote. The archipelago also includes numerous smaller islands and islets, such as Alegranza, Isla de Lobos, Montaña Clara, Roque del Oeste, and Roque del Este, as well as various rocks, including Garachico and Anaga. Historically, the island chain was referred to as "the Fortunate Isles". The Canary Islands are the southernmost and westernmost region of Spain as well as the largest and most populous archipelago of Macaronesia. They are also the largest and most populated archipelago in Spain. Owing to their strategic location, the Canary Islands have long been considered a link between Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
In October 2025, the Canary Islands had a population of 2,268,035, with a density of 305 inhabitants per km2, making them the seventh most populous autonomous community in Spain and the third-highest in population density, behind only Madrid and the Basque Country. The population is mostly concentrated on the two capital islands, with around 43% on Tenerife and 39% on Gran Canaria. In 2026, the Canary Islands are expected to have a nominal GDP of €64.123 billion, resulting in a GDP per capita of €28,272.
The Canary Islands, especially Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, and Lanzarote, are a major tourist destination, with over 14.1 million visitors in 2023. This is due to their beaches, subtropical climate, and important natural attractions, especially Maspalomas in Gran Canaria and Mount Teide, a World Heritage Site in Tenerife. Mount Teide is the highest peak in Spain and the 3rd tallest volcano in the world, measured from its base on the ocean floor. The islands have warm summers and winters warm enough for the climate to be technically tropical at sea level. The amount of precipitation and the level of maritime moderation vary depending on location and elevation. The archipelago includes green areas as well as semi-desert. The islands' high mountains are ideal for astronomical observation, because they lie above the temperature inversion layer. As a result, the archipelago has two professional astronomical observatories: the Teide Observatory on Tenerife, and Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma.
In 1927, the Province of Canary Islands was split into two provinces, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas. In 1982, the autonomous community of the Canary Islands was established. The cities of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria are, jointly, the capitals of the islands. Those cities are also, respectively, the capitals of the provinces of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has been the largest city in the Canaries since 1768, except for a brief period in the 1910s. Between the 1833 territorial division of Spain and 1927, Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the sole capital of the Canary Islands. In 1927, it was ordered by decree that the capital of the Canary Islands would be shared between two cities, and this arrangement persists to the present day. The third largest city in the Canary Islands is San Cristóbal de La Laguna, another World Heritage Site on Tenerife.
During the Age of Sail, the islands were the main stopover for Spanish galleons during the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, which sailed that far south in order to catch the prevailing northeasterly trade winds.
Etymology
The name Islas Canarias is likely derived from the Latin name Canariae Insulae, meaning 'Islands of the Dogs', perhaps because monk seals or sea dogs were abundant, a name that was evidently generalized from the ancient name of one of these islands, Canaria – presumably Gran Canaria. According to the historian Pliny the Elder, the island Canaria contained "vast multitudes of dogs of very large size". The connection to dogs is retained in their depiction on the islands' coat-of-arms.Other theories speculate that the name comes from the Nukkari Berber tribe living in the Moroccan Atlas, named in Roman sources as Canarii, though Pliny again mentions the relation of this term with dogs.
The name of the islands is not derived from the canary bird; rather, the birds are named after the islands.
History
Ancient and pre-Hispanic times
Before the arrival of humans, the Canaries were inhabited by prehistoric animals including the giant lizard, the Tenerife and Gran Canaria giant rats, and giant tortoises, Geochelone burchardi and Geochelone vulcanica.Although the original settlement of what are now called the Canary Islands is not entirely clear, linguistic, genetic, and archaeological analyses indicate that indigenous peoples were living on the Canary Islands at least 2,000 years ago, possibly 3,000, and that they shared a common origin with the Amazighs on the nearby North African coast. Reaching the islands may have taken place using several small boats, landing on the easternmost islands Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. These groups came to be known collectively as the Guanches, although Guanches had been the name for only the indigenous inhabitants of Tenerife.
According to a 2024 study by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, there is archaeological evidence that the Romans were the first to establish contact with the islands, during the period from the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE. There was no overlap with the occupation by the people who were inhabiting the islands at the time of the Spanish conquest, who had first arrived sometime between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE.
As José Farrujia describes, "The indigenous Canarians lived mainly in natural caves, usually near the coast, above sea level. These caves were sometimes isolated but more commonly formed settlements, with burial caves nearby". Archaeological work has uncovered a rich culture visible through artefacts of ceramics, human figures, fishing, hunting and farming tools, plant fibre clothing and vessels, as well as cave paintings. At Lomo de los Gatos on Gran Canaria, a site occupied from 1,600 years ago up until the 1960s, round stone houses, complex burial sites, and associated artefacts have been found. Across the islands are thousands of Libyco-Berber alphabet inscriptions that have been extensively documented by many linguists.
The social structure of indigenous Canarians encompassed "a system of matrilineal descent in most of the islands, in which inheritance was passed on via the female line. Social status and wealth were hereditary and determined the individual's position in the social pyramid, which consisted of the king, the relatives of the king, the lower nobility, villeins, plebeians, and finally executioners, butchers, embalmers, and prisoners". Their religion was animist, centring on the sun and moon, as well as natural features such as mountains.
Exploration
The islands may have been visited by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Carthaginians. King Juba II, Caesar Augustus's Numidian protégé, is credited with discovering the islands for the Western world. According to Pliny the Elder, Juba found the islands uninhabited, but found "a small temple of stone" and "some traces of buildings". Juba dispatched a naval contingent to re-open the dye production facility at Mogador in what is now western Morocco in the early first century AD. That same naval force was subsequently sent on an exploration of the Canary Islands, using Mogador as their mission base.The names given by Romans to the individual islands were Ninguaria or Nivaria, Canaria, Pluvialia or Invale, Ombrion, Planasia, Iunonia or Junonia and Capraria.
From the 14th century onward, numerous visits were made by sailors from Mallorca, Portugal, and Genoa. Lancelotto Malocello settled on Lanzarote in 1312. The Mallorcans established a mission with a bishop in the islands that lasted from 1350 to 1400.
Castilian conquest
In 1402, the Castilian colonisation of the islands began with the expedition of the French explorers Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de la Salle, nobles and vassals of Henry III of Castile, to Lanzarote. From there, they went on to conquer Fuerteventura and El Hierro. These invasions were "brutal cultural and military clashes between the indigenous population and the Castilians" lasting over a century due to formidable resistance by indigenous Canarians. A professor of history has branded the conquest of the islands as a genocide of the Guanches.Béthencourt received the title King of the Canary Islands, but still recognised King Henry III as his overlord. It was not a simple military enterprise, given the aboriginal resistance on some islands. Neither was it politically, since the particular interests of the nobility conflicted with those of the states, particularly Castile, which were in the midst of territorial expansion and in a process of strengthening of the crown against the nobility.
File:AlonsoFernandezdeLugo2.JPG|thumb|upright=1.25|Alonso Fernández de Lugo presenting the captured native Guanche kings of Tenerife to the Catholic Monarchs
Historians distinguish two periods in the conquest of the Canary Islands:
Aristocratic conquest : This refers to the early conquests carried out by the nobility, for their own benefit and without the direct participation of the Crown of Castile, which merely granted rights of conquest in exchange for pacts of vassalage between the noble conqueror and the Crown. One can identify within this period an early phase known as the Betancurian or Norman conquest, carried out by Jean de Bethencourt and Gadifer de la Salle between 1402 and 1405, which involved the islands of Lanzarote, El Hierro, and Fuerteventura. The subsequent phase is known as the Castilian conquest, carried out by Castilian nobles who acquired, through purchases, assignments and marriages, the previously conquered islands and also incorporated the island of La Gomera around 1450.
Royal conquest : This defines the conquest between 1478 and 1496, carried out directly by the Crown of Castile, during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, who armed and partly financed the conquest of those islands which were still unconquered: Gran Canaria, La Palma and Tenerife. This phase of the conquest came to an end in the year 1496, with the dominion of the island of Tenerife, bringing the entire Canarian Archipelago under the control of the Crown of Castile.
Béthencourt also established a base on the island of La Gomera, but it would be many years before the island was fully conquered. The natives of La Gomera, and of Gran Canaria, Tenerife, and La Palma, resisted the Castilian invaders for almost a century. In 1448, Maciot de Béthencourt sold the lordship of Lanzarote to Portugal's Prince Henry the Navigator, an action that was accepted by neither the natives nor the Castilians. Despite Pope Nicholas V ruling that the Canary Islands were under Portuguese control, the crisis swelled to a revolt which lasted until 1459 with the final expulsion of the Portuguese. In 1479, Portugal and Castile signed the Treaty of Alcáçovas, which settled disputes between Castile and Portugal over the control of the Atlantic. This treaty recognized Castilian control of the Canary Islands but also confirmed Portuguese possession of the Azores, Madeira, and the Cape Verde islands, and gave the Portuguese rights to any further islands or lands in the Atlantic that might be discovered.
The Castilians continued to dominate the islands, but due to the topography and the resistance of the native Guanches, they did not achieve complete control until 1496, when Tenerife and La Palma were finally subdued by Alonso Fernández de Lugo. As a result of this "the native pre-Hispanic population declined quickly due to war, epidemics, and slavery". The Canaries were incorporated into the Kingdom of Castile.