Public Holidays

A Canarian public holiday comes in three layers: the Spanish national ones, the single regional one on 30 May, and an island holiday that falls on a different date on each of the seven islands — plus two local days chosen by every town hall. Stack them up and a resident gets somewhere around fourteen paid holidays a year, and a visitor gets the occasional morning of closed shutters and no explanation.

It rarely spoils anything. Tourist areas are largely exempt from closing rules, so the resort supermarket, the seafront restaurants and the excursion desk will be open. It is the working towns inland and the practical errands — banks, the town hall, a doctor's appointment, a car hire office away from the airport — that stop.

The exact calendar is set each year and published in the Boletín Oficial de Canarias, so the definitive list for your dates comes from there rather than from any guide. What follows is the shape of the year, which barely changes.

The national holidays

These apply across Spain and therefore across the islands:

Boxing Day is not a Spanish holiday, which catches out every British visitor at least once: on 26 December the banks are open and the bins are collected. Conversely, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are working days that stop early, with restaurants serving a long late family dinner rather than a normal service.

30 May: Día de Canarias

The one holiday that belongs to the archipelago alone, and the one most visitors have never heard of. It is not a saint's day and not an anniversary of anything ancient. It marks 30 May 1983, the day the first Canarian Parliament held its opening session in Santa Cruz de Tenerife after the islands became an autonomous community — a date barely forty years old.

In practice it has become the islands' identity day. Schools hold the celebration in the week before, with children in traditional dress, a timple playing somewhere and gofio being eaten in classrooms; town squares fill with timple bands and folk dancing; and every bar in every village hangs out the seven-star flag. It is a genuinely lovely time to be inland rather than on a beach, and it falls in one of the best months of the year weather-wise.

The seven island holidays

Each island keeps its own patron's day as an insular public holiday, and it is a holiday only on that island. Fly from Tenerife to Gran Canaria on the right morning and you can leave a closed island for an open one.

• Tenerife — 2 February, the Virgen de la Candelaria, patron of the whole archipelago, whose basilica and nine bronze Guanche kings stand on the seafront at Candelaria.
• Gran Canaria — 8 September, the Virgen del Pino, centred on the mountain town of Teror, which fills with tens of thousands of pilgrims.
• La Palma — 5 August, the Virgen de las Nieves, above Santa Cruz de La Palma.
• Lanzarote — 15 September, the Virgen de los Dolores, known on the island as the Virgin of the Volcanoes, with a pilgrimage to Mancha Blanca on the edge of the Timanfaya lavas.
• El Hierro — 24 September, the Virgen de los Reyes.
• La Gomera — 6 October, the Virgen de Guadalupe.
• Fuerteventura — the third Saturday of September, the Virgen de la Peña, at Vega de Río Palmas.

The dates of the smaller-island ones are occasionally moved to make a long weekend, and Fuerteventura's falling on a Saturday means the practical day off is sometimes shifted. Check the official calendar if it matters to your plans.

What actually closes

On a full public holiday, expect closed: banks, post offices, town halls and all public administration, schools, doctors' surgeries other than urgent care, most museums, most independent shops in working towns, and many restaurants in non-tourist areas — family businesses take the day off with the family.

Expect open: hotels and everything in them, resort supermarkets and the large chains inside designated tourist zones, seafront restaurants and bars, petrol stations, the duty pharmacy under the rota described on our page about pharmacies and medical care, airports, ferry terminals and most paid attractions. Buses run, but on a Sunday timetable — which on a rural route can mean two services a day instead of ten, so check the timetable before you rely on a bus to get you home.

Municipal markets close, and that includes the ones visitors plan trips around; before setting out for Teguise on a Sunday or any of the island markets, confirm it is running when a holiday lands on market day.

The puente, and why it matters more than the holiday

When a public holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, Spain bridges it. The Monday or Friday between the holiday and the weekend becomes a puente — a bridge — and a great many people take it off. Occasionally two holidays in the same week produce an acueducto, an aqueduct, and the whole week evaporates.

For a visitor this is the more consequential effect, because it drives domestic travel. Mainland Spaniards fly to the islands for a puente, hotel prices in Tenerife and Gran Canaria jump, ferries fill and the good restaurants need booking. The December bridge around the 6th and 8th is the biggest, the early May one is close behind, and Holy Week is in a category of its own. If you are choosing dates, our parallel page on school terms and holiday pricing is worth reading together with this one.

Holy Week, which is not a single day

Semana Santa is the week before Easter, and although only Thursday and Friday are formal holidays, the practical shutdown is longer. Processions fill the streets of La Laguna, Santa Cruz de La Palma and Las Palmas, businesses run on reduced hours from the Wednesday, and the islands are full of Spanish families. It is one of the most atmospheric weeks of the year and one of the most expensive — our page on Holy Week in the Canaries covers what to expect and where the best processions are.

The holidays worth planning a trip around

Some Canarian holidays are an inconvenience. Several are the reason to come.

Carnival in Santa Cruz in February is one of the largest in the world and takes over the capital for a fortnight, with its Las Palmas rival running at the same time; neither Monday nor Tuesday of carnival is a national holiday but both are effectively local ones in the capitals. Three Kings on 6 January is the emotional centre of the Canarian Christmas, with camel-led parades the night before. And the Corpus Christi carpets in La Orotava — enormous pictures laid out in coloured volcanic sand — are a working-day spectacle in late spring that most visitors miss entirely. The full year of island festivals has more.

Planning around them

A few simple habits cover it. Get cash before a holiday, because banks close and rural cash machines run dry. Do the supermarket shop the day before. If you need a bank, a notary, a hire-car office in town or a doctor, do not leave it to a Monday you have not checked. Book restaurants for holiday evenings, when locals eat out in force. And if the shutters are down and the streets are empty, go and find the church square — whatever is closed, something is almost certainly happening there.

The broader rhythm of Canarian opening hours, including the midday break and Sunday trading, is set out on our page about shop hours and the siesta, which is the companion to this one.