Things to do in Santiago del Teide

Santiago del Teide is really two municipalities in one. Down on the coast sit Los Gigantes and Puerto de Santiago: six-hundred-metre cliffs dropping into the sea, a marina, whale-watching trips and a calendar aimed largely at visitors all year round. Up the hill, the old town is a small midland village with its own cycle of fiestas.

Its programming reflects that double life: watersports, sport and live music on the coast; romerías, patron saint fiestas and community events up top. Both appear on this page, in date order.

The event that anchors the year is the Almond Blossom Festival in late January or early February, when the valley's almond trees flower over the volcanic landscape left by the Chinyero eruption of 1909 — the most recent Tenerife has had. It's one of the few Canarian fiestas that depends on the weather: if the winter is odd, the blossom comes early or late and the dates shift with it.