The Canary Islands are estimated to be around 30 million years old. Their existence was known in ancient times. The earliest settlement discovered has been dated back to 200 BC although earlier settlement is possible.

It was long suggested that Cro-Magnon, the Paleolithic predecessor to Homo sapiens, first inhabited the Canaries. Although that is now generally not though to be the case.

By the time Europeans started looking around the islands in the Middle Ages they were inhabited by a number of tribes which were often hostile to each other. The first reliable account of Europeans landing was in the late 13th century when Genoese captain Lanzarotto Malocello came across an island that would later bear a version of his name: Lanzarote. A whole host of dreamers looking for legendary Rode Oro (River of Gold) that many thought flowed through the Atlantic, missionaries looking for souls to save and slavers look to fill their holds passed by or settled down.

After almost a century of massacres, warfare and the native Guanches where sold of into slavery. Another century later their language had all but disappeared. The survivors intermarried with the invaders, converted to Christianity and taken Spanish names. Spain had to fight for it's control of the islands however.

First Moroccan troops occupied Lanzarote in 1569 and 1586, then Sir Francis Drake had a go at Las Palmas in 1595, a Dutch fleet reduced Las Palmas to rubble in 1599, then the British Admiral Robert Blake defeated the Spanish at Tenerife in 1657. The Spanish treasure fleet was annihilated.

Spain kept control though and the Canaries were declared a province of Spain in 1821. Santa Cruz de Tenerife was named the official capital of the Canary Islands. The WWI British maritime trade blockade on Europe destroyed the banana trade and many Canarios fled the islands to Latin America in search of a new life.

The short period of hope that followed WWI was soon ruined by the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The Canaries suffered the same post-war misery as Spain, and yet again thousands fled. In the 1950s 16,000 people left the islands and by the early 60s the doors were open to sun-starved tourists. This would prove to be the islands greatest boom and it transformed the economy miraculously. Now millions of tourists flock to the islands every year.