It’s already early June and the Canary Islands haven’t had enough rains. The earth is finding it difficult to be generous, even in these times of economic hardship. Life is bleak for those people forced by the financial crisis into rediscovering the art of getting an abandoned and parched plot of land provide a sack of potatoes. […]

  During one of his visits to Tenerife, quite close to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, James Young was invited to a cockfight. He had always been an intrepid traveller and explorer of different cultures and accepted the kind invitation with pleasure.   In fact it was the gardener at the English Library […]

    No, this isn’t a tale about a bold and fearsome gentleman from the land of my ancestors. Quite the contrary, it is simply my way of paying a small tribute to a gentle and beautiful species of plant which is endemic to the Atlantic isle of Tenerife, my family’s home for four generations. […]

  Osbert Ward was one of those true English gentlemen who took up residence in Puerto de la Cruz between the 1880s and the 1940s, when the little town of less than 6,000 inhabitants was still known as Port Orotava.   I describe him as a gentleman because he always did his best to show […]

  The first carnival parade in Puerto de la Cruz             Six magnificent chariots, invented with exquisite imagination, groups playing percussion instruments and singing Canary Island folk songs, and ladies and gentlemen dressed like seventeenth century aristocrats mounted on a brigade of horses sailed passively along the dusty lanes and into the cobbled streets […]