About LPA Pulse
Bienvenidos a The Pulse of Las Palmas!
100% human-curated. No AI slop. No marketing fluff. No ad invasion. Raw and unfiltered.
LPA Pulse is really just one more step in a journey that started back in 2016 when I first set foot in the wonderful city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
If you're planning to visit the city for the first time, are an expat or a digital nomad who has made the transition to full-time island life, this site is about helping you get the very best experience, in one of the greatest cities on earth!
When first walking through Parque de Santa Catalina📍 as a complete stranger to the city, you'll meet Lolita Pluma📍, (María Dolores Rivero Hernández) - A local legend, Queen of Parque Santa Catalina and a bit of a crazy cat woman! ¡La loca de los gatos!
If you're in Las Palmas for a few hours on a tour of the islands, planning a longer stay, hostel hopping or sharing co-working and living spaces, or even there long term and need to find an English-speaking plumber or electrician, pronto, not mañana, this site hopes to help fix you up with what you need to know.
It's all about having your finger on the Pulse of Las Palmas
Upon arrival, I was lost in a giant, hot, busy, dense, sprawling mass of unknown streets, or calles as they're called there, that's kah-yeh to our English tongues.
Está complicado to start. G can be an H sound, a lone Y is an "ee" sound and there are many tongue twisting street names to walk or run around. If you're thinking Jesus, let me stop you there, it's more like Hey-zoos!
Spanish is the mother tongue there, but el español en las islas canarias es diferente, it has a more Latin American vibe: it's spoken fast with Cuban and Venezuelan undertones, some S sounds in the middle or at the end of words are skipped, meaning many locals pronounce Las Palmas as La Palma, and it can be confusing - even to some Spanish speakers!
If this all seems a "bit foreign" to you, there'll be some guides to help you sound more like a local, and less like one of those pointy shouty tourist types...
I could have done with some good guides when I first landed!
When I first turned up I was dropping hard Hs on hola, and finishing off my gracias with an S sound, because that's how I thought it should be done. On the Spanish mainland, yes, but in the Canary islands it's more like graciah - as was explained to me by a shopkeeper one day:
¡Es gra-see-ah aquí, no gra-see-as!
Not knowing a thing about the place and immersing myself in it, initially for 90 days, then another 90 days, with as many visits as possible since, means every time I get off the Global bus at estación de guaguas Santa Catalina📍 (the bus station) after landing at LPA, Aeropuerto de Gran Canaria📍, it's smoother, easier and much more fun!
I've been planning on writing up some notes on the nuances of the Spanish language to help me get on better there, and realised it has potential to help you too.
My Spanish is still malo y limitado, but it's not just sufficient on a survival level, we're well into thriving territory now and I realised the more you have your finger on the "Pulse of Las Palmas", the more amazing an experience you'll have.
My adventures in the city just keep getting better, amazing me more and more:
- Booking great dining experiences.
- Sampling mouthwatering montaditos with Jamón Ibérico de Bellota.
- Receiving fantastic service.
- Experiencing the thrill of random popup festivals.
- Laughing at spontaneous outbreaks of happiness.
- Soaking up the vibes of open air concerts from rock to orchestras.
- Viewing cool drone shows - Quevedo "El Baifo": April 20th / Abril 20.
- Seeing the sky filled with fantastic fireworks!
- Smiling at sexy bum wiggles on the beach!
- Thinking WTF at "The burial of the sardine" / end of Carnival.
- Feeling the vibes of La noche de San Juan: June 23rd / Junio 23.
- Diving into mad midnight swims.
- Tasting award winning Ropa vieja / "old clothes" - a dish with a story...
- Sipping an incredible range of coffees to suit every taste.
- Experiencing flaming "Sausages to Hell" / "Chorizo al infierno".
- Chilling out with international vibes and a great cultural buzz.
- Loving the warmth, heart and soul of the Canario people!
Please excuse the shoddy camera work, my arm was aching!
Wonderful and wild weather: Calimas and Calufas
The weather isn't all sunshine, sometimes there's mad winds and torrential downpours that get all those tables along Paseo de Las Canteras📍, cleared away pretty quickly!
LPA Pulse
Generally speaking, it's either paradise that gets only the lightest mists of a shower, which can have the natives scurrying along closer to the shops to stay dry, and if you're there long enough, you'll do the same too, and you can expect some fun days when the winds go wild, or the heavens hit you with phenomenal oceanic thunderstorms!
The weather in the city, weather alerts and warnings of dust storms from the Sahara, called "calimas", or those ultra muggy and extra baking hot days, named "calufas", are all talking points in the cafes among the natives, and LPA Pulse will carry that news too, along with tide times plus sunrise and sunset hours, to help ensure you get the best views when sipping a sundowner somewhere in style.
If you're fancying kicking back now and sipping on something ice cold, I know just the spot for you...
Great views and great service but take some backup cash as their contactless card reader sometimes rejects cards when there's available funds. Luckily persistence paid off for me, but it's a little thing to know that removes one more hurdle in your day, we took efectivo the next time: always carry a few Euros for Sr Justin Case!
Get a selection of the best that Las Palmas has to offer, hotter than a fresh churro, sent every week, no spam, just tasty goodness and local insights
The Pulse of Las Palmas is still a very new project, so like the city itself, it might have a few places where there's some building work going on,
I promise you'll never be crashed out by emails from me if you join my free newsletter for weekly updates, but I can't guarantee the same from the waves of La Cicer📍. I'll never send any AI or marketing slop, only just good stuff to make good times better.
Wanna know how that La Cicer stretch of Playa de Las Canteras📍 got its name?
La Cicer stands for "Compañía Insular Colonial de Electricidad y Riegos" and was a power station that fed electric to the entire city up till the 90s, and going back before the energy plant was built in 1928, there was little there but sand dunes.
A tiny little origin story....
So, it's late, like really late, the kinda late where you've been drinking café solo all day, and no matter what you do, or how long you spend in a cold shower, that thing they call sleep is escaping your grasp.
I was sitting on a roof terrace on Calle de Luis Morote📍, and after realising that if I wanted to read an amazing guide to Las Palmas, I was gonna have to create it myself, found out LPAPulse.com was available, so I registered it and started making notes.
Yeah, there's well established news sites for the islands, but nothing where the focus is laser sharp on Las Palmas, for English speakers, where there's more to life than showing ads and recycling news from official sources about weather, flight delays and talk of volcanic activity.
Nativos are proudly singing "yo nací de un volcán" / "I was born from a volcano" so don't let any clickbait headlines stop you from visiting the island and having a great time, you might even discover some cool new music:
I guess you're wondering who the hell I am?
Good question, I've sat overlooking the ocean pounding into the volcanic rocks from Plaza de la Puntilla📍 asking myself the same, and I'm not sure I'm the most qualified person to answer, though I'll try...
- I'm Andy and I'm English / Soy Andy de Inglaterra.
- A Yorkshire lad, born in Scarborough.
- Background in Commercial Radio.
- The first voice to broadcast live on DAB digital radio in the UK.
- Former BBC Audio editor working in live sports production.
- Author of a couple of articles in local newspapers.
- Went digital, sold ringtones / melodías back in the day.
- Invented a couple of funky internet things.
- NASA, Nintendo, Stanford and Shrek have all used my code.
- Paid for something on a mobile with PayPal? I did that first.
- Created multiple projects with 100,000+ users.
- Burned out, went bust.
- Found myself in Las Palmas.
- Started a couple of radio stations since then.
- Found myself in Palma de Mallorca.
- Then again in LPdGC, and again...
- I've been there 25% of the time recently.
- I now feel at least 25% Canario in my spirit!
- I feel more at home there, than in the UK.
- ¡Quiero más! I want more!
At first I was kinda running away from good old fashioned stuff in the UK, you know, the rising cost of living, worsening quality of service and wanting a better life, but as time rolls on, I've realised I wasn't running from anything, I was running to something really awesome and life-changing instead!
There's still a rising cost of living, café solo is €1.20-1.30 now in most places. I remember it being €0.90 a shot so things are really no different there to "home" when you're really living it, but for me it's about having weird aspirations like:
- Registering at the Padrón to become formally local
- Getting somewhere over there that's "mi segundo hogar"
- Figuring out how to pay the water bill at the cash point
- Navigating Spanish paperwork so it's watertight
- Dumping the household trash in the bin at the end of the road
It's a city where there's a lot of dream living going on, but there are legal frameworks that apply to our waking lives. It's a place of extreme contrasts, so when there is the odd nightmare, I want to help you be able to:
- Find a late-night locksmith
- Get that broken window fixed
- Stop that shower from dripping
- Replace those old plug sockets
- Patch up that storm damage
You, yes you: I can't do this without you
Who are you? What do you do? What can you share about the city?
If you have a story, or know of something cool happening in Las Palmas, please reach out, get in touch and let me know!
LPA Pulse