Las Palmas

On June 24, 1478, the Castilian captain Juan Rejón landed on the northeastern coast of Gran Canaria with a small force and set up camp beneath a grove of date palms where the Guiniguada ravine meets the sea. He called the encampment Real de Las Palmas, the Royal Camp of the Palms. The palms he named were Phoenix canariensis, native to the Canary Islands. The indigenous Guanche people had lived on Gran Canaria for centuries before Spanish arrival but left no written record of a name for this particular bay.

The camp became a permanent settlement within years, and in 1519 Carlos I granted it a city charter under the name Las Palmas. The palm trees that named the city were not a symbol chosen for grandeur but a description of what stood in a specific location at the mouth of a specific ravine. This is common in Canarian toponymy: places named for what was visibly there when the first Spanish scribes put pen to paper.

Las Palmas grew into the principal port for Spanish ships heading to and from the Americas. Christopher Columbus stopped here in August 1492 to repair the Pinta's rudder and reprovision before his first crossing, and he returned in 1493 and again in 1498. The city's position in the Atlantic, roughly equidistant between Europe and the Caribbean, made it a crossroads, and the name Las Palmas appeared on Venetian and Portuguese charts within decades of the Spanish landing.

The full official name became Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the 20th century, to distinguish the city from Las Palmas province and from the several Las Palmas across the Spanish-speaking Americas. The Canarian palms that named the city are now the official symbol of the Canary Islands, pressed into the regional flag and coat of arms. The tree survived its naming.