Free live music and stuff in Las Palmas, July—August 2026

I was away for the most of July, and in August there wasn’t much on offer. Still.

• 30 July: Primer conversatorio de cantautoras de Gran Canaria @ Biblioteca Pública Municipal Josefina de la Torre, Paseo de las Canteras, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  With Dácil Santana, Laura Perdomo, Sara Brito, Aldara, Ana Label, Claudia Álamo, Ana Falcón, Sylvie Hernández and Mararía González. This and other events at the Biblioteca Pública Municipal Josefina de la Torre were part of the cycle «Ola de Letras».

  

• 8 August: Versos a pie de orilla @ Biblioteca Pública Municipal Josefina de la Torre
  Mararía González (vocals, guitar), Ana Falcón (vocals, piano) and Adriana Medina (poetry).

  

• 12 August: Miguel Ángel Castro @ Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), Calle de los Balcones, 9
  The first concert from this year’s cycle CAAMclásico coordinated by Ángel Luis Quintana. The programme included:
  • Tchaikovsky: The Seasons (selection)
    • May: White Nights
    • June: Barcarolle
    • August: Harvest
  • Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet. Ten Pieces for Piano, Op. 75 (selection)
    • Scene: The Street Awakens
    • Montagues and Capulets
    • Friar Laurence
    • Mercutio
    • Romeo and Juliet before Parting
  • Rachmaninoff: Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36
    1. Allegro agitato
    2. Non allegro — Lento
    3. Allegro molto

  

• 15 August: Música Viva @ Jardines del Atlántico
  This was the first of the new cycle of open-air concerts, Música Viva, a double bill of Pleito, a solo project by Alba Gil Aceytuno (saxophone, loops, percussion, voice), and La Cofradía, a jazz quartet featuring Kervin Barreto (trumpet), Juan Pérez Pérez (drums), Nelson Saavedra (double bass) and Luis Sánchez Guerra (piano).

  

• 21 August: Jazz en el aire @ CAAM
  Luis Sánchez Guerra (piano), Carlos Meneses (double bass) and Suso Vega (drums) playing mostly original compositions, with Let It Be as an encore. A concert from this year’s cycle JazzCAAM.

  

• 22 August: Ibaute @ Biblioteca Pública Municipal Josefina de la Torre
  What it says: Ibaute (vocals, guitar).

  

• 27 August: Muestra abierta de escuelas de danza @ Biblioteca Pública Municipal Josefina de la Torre
  With the participation of students from several dance schools of Las Palmas.

  

And exhibitions:

• 16 July — 14 August: «Módulo 4» @ Centro de Artes Plásticas (CAP), Calle Colón, 8
  A mural created by the graffiti artist Ayoze Jiménez with participation of the Gran Canarian public, including several inmates of the Prison Las Palmas I.

  

Three exhibitions @ Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), Calle de los Balcones, 9

• 8 July — 18 October: «Pintura Pintura»
  A retrospective of works by the Canarian painter Juan José Gil (1947—2023).

  

• 8 July — 18 October: «Soñando otra Ítaca»
  Paintings, sculpture and installations by Sandra Ramos (Havana, 1969).

  

• 29 July — 18 October: «Iluminar el silencio. Hacia una colección y un relato igualitarios»
  Five works by the Canarian artists Lola del Castillo and María Jesús Pérez Vilar.

  

Goodbye, summer.

Once in Os Peares

Os Peares (officially Nosa Señora do Pilar dos Peares) is the strangest village I’ve been to. It belongs to (or shall we say, is torn between) two provinces, four municipalities, three judicial districts and two dioceses. In part — but only in part — this is due to its unusual geography. The rivers Búbal, Minho and Sil meet here; cross one of them and you are bound to find yourself in another administrative division. This peculiar arrangement is guaranteed to make any paperwork-related undertaking a nightmare for the villagers. On the contrary, the mere mentioning of its name must provide infinite joy to bureaucrats dealing with the local matters.

It’s difficult to say what exactly is the centre of the village but I’d place it near the church (Iglesia Nuestra Señora del Pilar de los Peares) — wait, there are two buildings with this name, and I’ve never seen either of them open. Scrap that, I’d place the village centre right in the natural pool of the river Búbal, because this is the place you can meet more than one person at a time. Having said that, I spent several glorious mornings by this pool enjoying total solitude.

Next to the pool there is a reasonably modern building that combines a health centre (the doctor was on holidays when I was there), an ATM and a post office. This latter is open every working day from 11:00 to 11:30. One day I came to visit it because I needed to send a gift to my friend in Santander. The postman did not have a suitable envelope but was able to fashion something resembling it out of scraps of brown paper he’d found under his desk. I was pleasantly surprised when I learned, two weeks later, that the package had safely arrived to its addressee, together with its contents.

The village boasts its own train station where a train stops twice a day: 8:37 to Ourense and 16:48 from Ourense. So a day out in the provincial capital is doable. The train in either direction stops at platform no. 3. I don’t know how useful this information is as I was unable to find platforms no. 1 and no. 2. There is an Eiffelesque railway bridge painted sky blue, the kind of bridge you’d board a train only for the privilege to cross the river by. However, you’d have to go in the direction of Monforte de Lemos to experience that, which I never did. What I did was the next best thing: to cross it on foot. Or maybe it is the first best thing, given that you can stop at any point and enjoy the view to your heart’s content.

The village also has a pharmacy; a grocery store (I heard a rumour that the owner is about to retire, which could spell the end of it); and, of course, a number of bars. My favourite is Bar Barra, where a beer in a frosty mug and a generous tapa will cost you €2.

Os Peares is the birthplace of one Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the man who thinks he is the next Prime Minister of Spain. In another bar, spookily called Luz de Gas, a big photo on the wall shows the man himself posing with the owner-cum-waiter. I don’t know why she put it there, I think it scares the customers off.

Ah, Galicia, beautiful Galicia. Apart from Estrella Galicia and pulpo a la gallega, it gave us Franco, Rajoy and now Feijóo.

Speaking of Franco. Some 1.5 km northeast of the village centre (as defined above) you’ll find a hydroelectric power station constructed during the dictatorship, between 1945 and 1955. The generalissimo just loved his dams. Below the dam, a model village was built for the power station workers, complete with a school and a chapel. Then this housing “was abandoned and fell into disuse for decades”, although the station itself seems to be working all right. Now the restored village hosts Peares Language Immersion Centre. In the summer, the students of the immersion courses descend on the natural pool in the centre of Os Peares where they outnumber the sunbathing locals by an order of magnitude. Above the power station is another place worth visiting, El Mirador Alto da Picota; do some research (a hint: Google Maps may not show you the best route) and wear proper hiking shoes, not sandals as I did.

It’s well known that the rain in Spain stays mainly in Galicia. Not in July though, and especially not in Os Peares. In the four weeks that I spent there, there was one rainy day and several misty mornings, otherwise full sun with daily temperatures up to 40 °C.

According to Wikipedia, in 2023 Os Peares had 57 inhabitants. If it is so, there are more homes than people and, inevitably, many houses are empty, which confers this idyllic corner a certain degree of creepiness. Even stray cats and dogs are conspicuous by their absence. If there are any unsolved murders in Galicia, Os Peares provides the ideal setting. It just has this aura.

This aspect aside, Os Peares is a great spot to visit and probably spend a couple of days hiking around. By the end of the first week there, I thought I’d seen all there is to see. After two weeks, I was fed up with it and with the heat. By the end of the third week, after seeing all there is to see in Ourense, I was ready to go. I left Os Peares after four weeks hoping to never come back.

Os Peares is a place you couldn’t help returning to. On many an occasion I was greeted by a road sign welcoming me, once again, to Os Peares, which means that I must have left the village behind me at some point without noticing it. I’m considering “Once in Os Peares” for the title of my new book. OK maybe “Twice in Os Peares”. But that will be it.

More photos of Os Peares @ Shutterstock.

The Girl on the Train

by Paula Hawkins

Just like it was the case with Rosalía, I learned about this book from one of my students, who was reading it at the time, during a “one-to-one” session.

“Would you recommend it?”, I asked. “I don’t know yet”, she said, “I’ve only started. I started reading in on the train while travelling here. But I can’t put it down.”

Eight years after that conversation, I finally read it. Probably after everybody else read it, but still. I can confirm its utter unputdownability. (Why, it kept Stephen King up most of the night, or so he says.) And not only that. It’s a great story, exceptionally well written, deliciously noir with quite a few twists, including that of a corkscrew. And how couldn’t you fall in love with its unreliable, alcoholic, mentally unstable, etc. heroine, the titular girl on the train?

Some fun facts about geography of the novel. Both Ashbury and Witney are in Oxfordshire. (There are a few more Ashburys but they are even further away from London.) There are no trains serving either of them. So no way to commute to Euston in “one hour and one minute”. Ashbury, Oxfordshire is a historic village dating from the 9th century with about 500 inhabitants, not “a 1960s new town, spreading like a tumour over the heart of Buckinghamshire”. Witney is a market town, not a “village-on-the-edge-of-London”. The author studied at Oxford and perhaps wanted to transplant these names closer to the capital. The other mentioned places, such as Holkham, seem to be realistically located.

Saturday, 13 July 2013

Morning

I know without looking at a clock that it is somewhere between seven forty-five and eight fifteen. I know, from the quality of the light, from the sounds of the street outside my window, from the sound of Cathy vacuuming the hallway right outside my room. Cathy gets up early to clean the house every Saturday, no matter what. It could be her birthday, it could be the morning of the Rapture — Cathy will get up early on Saturday to clean. She says it’s cathartic, it sets her up for a good weekend, and because she cleans the house aerobically, it means she doesn’t have to go to the gym.
It doesn’t really bother me, this early-morning vacuuming, because I wouldn’t be asleep anyway. I cannot sleep in the mornings; I cannot snooze peacefully until midday. I wake abruptly, my breath jagged and heart racing, my mouth stale, and I know immediately that’s it. I’m awake. The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be. I lie there, listening to the sound of Cathy’s urgent, cheerful busyness, and I think about the clothes on the side of the railway line and about Jess kissing her lover in the morning sunshine.
The day stretches out in front of me, not a minute of it filled.
I could go to the farmer’s market on the Broad; I could buy venison and pancetta and spend the day cooking.
I could sit on the sofa with a cup of tea and Saturday Kitchen on TV.
I could go to the gym.
I could rewrite my CV.
I could wait for Cathy to leave the house, go to the off-licence and buy two bottles of Sauvignon Blanc.