Art Nouveau in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

By the time the houses were built, it was a period of prosperity in the city, therefore the local bourgeois lived in this beautiful buildings. In the beginning of the twentyth century the city was small (approx. 50 000 inh.) and although the Canary Islands are approx. 1100 km far from Europe. Art Nouveau, as well as other artistic styles, arrived to the islands receiving influences from Belgium, Austria, France.. as you will be able to look in the pictures.

Canarian Art Nouveau, or Modernismo in Spanish, took place only in the most important cities of the archipelago; Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the island of Gran Canaria and Santa de Cruz de Tenerife in the island of Tenerife, especially in the first one. The differences of Canarian A. N. are that here you can not see animal or human faces (except one) in facades, the floral decoration is the only one. Also the local architects use local material like volcanic stone and the size of the buildings are not as big as for example Riga or Vienna, but me must not forget that Vienna was a big city and the capital of an empire. Most of the time, the use of Art Nouveau was limited to the facade and not in the whole building. But the pictures below show a very nice work.