Tenerife Around the streets and around the world

Romería de Buenavista. The annual San Antonio Abad fiestas (and livestock fair) in Buenavista del Norte, which this year, take place on Sunday, January 25th also incorporates a Romería (ox carts, food, wine, traditional costumes) and a knees up to the Malibú Band.

Tenerife Carnaval 2009 - Official Program

Those of you who can read Spanish, can now consult the lengthy Tenerife Carnaval 2009 - Official Program. Although, clearly, there's a lot more detail, there doesn't appear to be any change to the core of important events that - based on my highly subjective opinion - are those that are likely to be of most interest to visitors and even most busy residents and already listed here.

Televisión Canaria are to transmit 21 events of the Carnaval in Santa Cruz, Tenerife - in the exterior via their international satellite channels.

Mildly amusing: as you can see from the photo, a press conference was called requiring the Santa Cruz mayor, Miguel Zerolo, his deputy dawg, Ángel Llanos and the councillor for fiestas, Maribel Oñate, along with the director of the public TV station - Guillermo García - just to announce that! (When he was a "simple" TV presenter, of course, the latter was the more familiar, Willy García. :-)

Twin towns La Laguna and San Antonio?

The University of La Laguna (ULL), in La Laguna, Tenerife, is to increase it's collaboration with the University of San Antonio, Texas (UTSA), city which was founded by Canary Island settlers in the early 18th Century. (Many descendants of these first settlers still reside in San Antonio. Probably the most famous contribution the Canary Islanders made was building the San Antonio de Valero Mission, later known as the Alamo. More links of interest.) Photo courtesy PDPhoto.org

Returning the favour ... American rock band, Wilco is to open their Spanish tour with a concert at the Auditorio de Tenerife, on May 23rd.

Hannah posts about Hitch hiking in Ibiza and I just thought I'd mention that in rural areas of Tenerife this is still normal too. Having lived in a valley where there were at most a half dozen (each way) buses on most days, it was never seen as anything unusual and was something I resorted to occasionally when there was no alternative. Locals also told me that if one was to go to a fiesta and you couldn't get home (because there wasn't any public transport at night), then you can ask the municipal police for a lift. No, I never tried that! You'd absolutely never get that advice in the UK, would you? Nor in the brochures. :-)

Canary Island population growth slows

Mortality is on the increase, while the birth rate in the islands is on the descent, as it is in the rest of Spain. And according to data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) (National Statistics Institute) the Canaries will lose "vegetative population" - the difference between the number of births and the number of deaths - to be left with a third of current levels within 8 years.

In other words, natural population growth in the last year amounted to 7,180 people, which is three times the number projected for the year 2017.

By extension, therefore, if they wish to ensure economic expansion, the Canaries will probably have to RELY ON immigration to make up the numbers, or start reproducing more. Rather contrary to what some politicians suggest.

The same statistics institution project that the Canary Islands will receive no less than 239,737 immigrants in the next decade, with 56,968 emigrating, making a net migratory increase in the archipelago's population of 182.769.

Furthermore ...

600,000 people in the Canary Islands (a very significant proportion of a 2 million population) are at risk of heart attack, the major reason for this being that 40% of the population are overweight and 20% are obese.

Business leaders (Confederación Provincial de Empresarios de Santa Cruz de Tenerife) say that the Canaries have entered into recession.

The Tourism department of the Canary Islands executive initiates contacts with TUI Travel in London to encourage the influx of tourists to the archipelago. The Canary Islands received 3,356,935 tourists last year from the United Kingdom. Almost 50% of the sales of package tours went to Thomas Cook and, Tui Travel whose brands include Thomson and First Choice.

Spanish Euro MP David Hammerstein (Los Verdes / The Greens), reports that "unfortunately, the work on the port of Granadilla is going to commence", although, he says "we can still ask the EU not to finance the project."

Related Posts: Brussels to approve Granadilla Port Tomorrow - Granadilla Port Gets Go-Ahead, with conditions. - EU says granadilla port should go ahead - Thousands still say no to Granadilla Port.