Fiestas are not a tourist product here. They are how the calendar works, and in a small municipality there is something on most weeks — a saint’s day, a romería, a village opening its square for a weekend. Almost none of it is advertised online.
Through the year
All year — romerías and saints’ processions in individual villages, and lucha canaria, Canarian wrestling, which has a ring in Puerto de la Cruz.
January — Three Kings parades on the 5th, across every town. Our hosts single out La Caleta de Interián.
January–February — almond blossom around Santiago del Teide, with a weekend market and walking routes through the trees. One of the better reasons to come in winter.
February–March — Carnival, in Santa Cruz and Puerto de la Cruz. Santa Cruz holds the largest carnival in Spain after Cádiz.
April–June — the tajinaste blooms on Teide: tall red flower spikes rising out of bare volcanic ground, and a genuinely strange sight. Worth timing a trip to the park around.
June — Corpus Christi, with elaborate carpets made from coloured sand and flower petals laid in the streets of La Orotava, La Laguna and Santa Cruz. Then San Juan on the 23rd — midsummer bonfires, including on the beach at San Marcos.
September — Festival Boreal in Los Silos, international music and food.
November — San Andrés in Icod de los Vinos, eight minutes up the hill. The year’s new wine is broached and people slide down the town’s steep streets on wooden boards. Also the Mes del Vino in La Laguna, with a wine market our hosts particularly enjoyed.
December — the nativity scene in La Orotava, and lighting ceremonies in every village in the first week of the month.
How to actually find them
Look at the posters. Village fiestas are advertised on noticeboards and lamp posts, dates shift year to year, and there is frequently no website at all.
Ask us before you arrive. We generally know what is happening in the villages within reach that week, and it is the sort of thing that turns an ordinary evening into the one people remember.
A note on timing
If you have flexibility, San Andrés in late November is the one we would aim for — it coincides with guachinche season, when the new wine is being poured and the grower’s kitchens are open.