Overview

Located off the coast of western Africa, the Canary Islands are characterized by such stunning variations in geography and climate that visitors sometimes describe them as "a continent in miniature." Overall temperatures are pleasant, and annual rainfall is low, creating a dry climate unusual for a region where nothing is very far from the sea. Thus tourism is a thriving industry in the Canaries, which have belonged to Spain since their conquest in the early fifteenth century. The outside world has known about the Canaries since ancient times, but the islands remained in the possession of their Berber inhabitants for centuries before the 1402 arrival of Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de La Salle—an event that...