In 2024, the Canary Islands Pilgrimages application was launched, downloadable for both Android and IOS, which includes more than 400 pilgrimages from all over the archipelago, 25 of them in Lanzarote.
The app, which has more than 8,000 downloads nationwide, not only includes a calendar, but also a chat to meet other interested people, a blog with cultural content and curiosities, and a space to share images.
“The idea came from Fernado Schönfeldt, director of La Casa de los Balcones in La Orotava, a 17th-century house converted into a museum,” explains Oliver Hernández, Marketing and Communication Manager of the same in an interview with Ekonomus.
Hernández, who studied Journalism in La Laguna and later specialized in marketing, explains that the application was born in 2019 for Tenerife thanks to a subsidy from the Innobonos program of the Government of the Canary Islands, but given “the scope it had and the acceptance, it was decided in 2024 to expand it to the entire region.”
“Many people demanded to know information about the pilgrimages on their island, for example in Lanzarote,” clarifies the application manager.
“I usually do a weekly review and when I think the calendar is complete, they keep appearing. Many times the festival committees themselves are the ones who write to us, also anonymous people,” who inform us of the missing pilgrimages.
"We will soon incorporate a section of traditional bars and guachinches"
A quick consultation about the ones that are coming up shows that on September 13, the Guatiza Pilgrimage is celebrated in honor of the Cristo de las Aguas and also the Los Dolores Pilgrimage in Tinajo, which will be accompanied by a romero dance. The application includes descriptions and recommendations for each of them. For example, of the aforementioned Guatiza pilgrimage, it says that “it is the oldest on the island.”
Hernández explains that one of his main objectives is precisely to make the festivals of the non-capital islands visible so that “the most common ones are not always talked about” and to awaken interest in traveling between islands and not just getting to know the pilgrimages of the island in which they live.
Asked about the particularities of the Lanzarote pilgrimages, Hernández says that he is very struck by “how well-dressed people are.”
“In Tenerife and Gran Canaria, people tend to neglect, for example, the issue of footwear, or many times they wear one piece well, but the other in a slightly more dubious way,” he exemplifies.
In addition, he explains, “in Lanzarote, and I would say also in Fuerteventura, the headdresses, the way of wearing the scarves, apart from the hats, is very characteristic.”
Looking to the future, the application manager shares: "We will soon incorporate a section of traditional bars and guachinches."
Canary Islands Pilgrimages is free, so in order to continue improving it in the medium term, Hernández is reaching sponsorship agreements with the town halls of the main pilgrimages, to which they take promotional material, “for example fans” and invites the town halls of Lanzarote to join.
