One of the most colourful and interesting aspects of life on Tenerife is the fiestas. There are literally hundreds of these throughout the year. We tried to chart them once and decided it was an impossible task by the time we reached a mind-numbing 505 fiestas.

The thing is that not only does every traditional town celebrate an endless number of fiestas throughout the year, individual barrios (neighbourhoods) within each town celebrate their own fiestas as well. So you get a municipality like Los Realejos in the north of Tenerife that proudly claims to have the most fiestas of anywhere in Spain – celebrating 80 plus each year. It begs the question – where do Tinerfeños find the time to do any work?

Although there isn’t a fiesta season as such, the summer months sees a hike in the number of fiestas, as well as temperatures, with upwards of 60 a month being celebrated between May and the end of September.

Most people might have heard of the wild partying that accompanies Carnaval on Tenerife and maybe even the flower carpets at Corpus Christi or the hooded processions of Semana Santa (Easter) but there are many, many, many other reasons that Tinerfeños hold fiestas. Most are religious and mainly involve honouring a local, municipal or regional saint (often connected with some sort of miracle) like the fishermen’s celebrations in honour of the Virgen del Carmen. Whilst others have their roots in primitive worship like the sun-worshipping Fiestas de San Juan in Midsummer and the Romerías which are like harvest festivals. Others seem to be made up in order to have something different that the municipality next door (firework battles in Los Realejos, abusing giant hearts made from fruit and pastry in Tejina).

Some are solemn affairs whilst others are just wild and wacky. But what every one of them have in common is that they are fun, fascinating and provide an essential insight into Tenerife’s culture. To experience Tenerife fully you need to experience one of its fiestas.

We can’t promise to list them all, but over time we will add details of the best of the fiestas in each municipality with tips about when to go, what happens when you get there and, most importantly, how to survive them.