The Canary Islands: Sanmao's Beloved Isles, the Atlantic's Thermostat
At 28 degrees north latitude, the Atlantic current weaves seven temperate pearls along the western edge of the African continent. While Northern Europe is plunged into the polar night of December, the palm leaves of the Canary Islands still sway in the 22°C sea breeze. This isn't a seasonal escape; it's mainland Europe's thermostat, providing 300 days of sunshine and extending daylight for six million sufferers of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Mount Teide on Tenerife is the first to catch winter's initial rays. A thin layer of snow covers the 3,718-meter-high crater, while the scent of sunscreen drifts through Santa Cruz port below. Olaf, a Norwegian, jogs along the beach in a t-shirt. His fitness tracker shows this is his seventh consecutive winter escaping Oslo's polar night. "Here, every inch of skin absorbs vitamin D." On the beach behind him, an elderly German man pushes his wife, who suffers from depression, in a wheelchair, letting the subtropical sand sift through her pale fingers.
The Maspalomas Dunes on Gran Canaria conceal the wrinkles of time. A 15th-century Spanish watchtower stands across the dunes from the white walls of a 21st-century Nordic sanatorium. In a spa hotel at the foot of the dunes, a Swedish doctor administers light therapy. Data shows that the incidence of winter depression in the islands is 67% lower than in Northern Europe. A 1975 photograph hangs in the hotel corridor: Sanmao, in a bohemian dress, walks across the dunes, while in the lens of José's camera, the sand reflects the same sunlight as today.
La Palma's Starlight Reserve offers another healing space. While mainland Europe is shrouded in clouds, a Danish astronomer adjusts his telescope at the observatory. "The polar night deprives us not only of light but also of our perception of the universe." He points to a white village beneath the Milky Way. Stone houses built by Spanish immigrants a century ago are now converted into stargazing accommodations. Nordic tourists lie in hammocks on the terraces, observing the Magellanic Clouds with the naked eye—a visual feast absent in their homelands for three months, now restoring their retinas, damaged by the polar night.
Fragments of time float in every port of the islands. On the old lighthouse in the port of Las Palmas, a 16th-century bronze bell coexists with modern weather radar. The bell once guided Columbus's fleet and now directs Nordic cruise ships to shore. In the nearby fish market, Moroccan fishermen and Spanish vendors haggle in a mix of dialects. Sanmao memorabilia—coconut shell necklaces, desert scarves—remind people that this Eastern writer planted her Saharan nostalgia in Gran Canaria's soil in the 1970s.
The Church of San Cristobal in Tenerife witnesses transtemporal rituals. Every Sunday, Nordic visitors and locals share in the sacrament of sunlight: Norwegian housewives dry linen beneath Gothic arches, German painters capture light and shadow in Moorish cloisters, and their children chase Spanish children in the square, their footprints overlapping Sanmao's. Church archives record that at José's funeral in 1976, islanders spontaneously sent 99 yellow roses. Today, descendants of those roses grow wild outside the cemetery walls.
The islands' affordability is revealed in corner cafes. A latte costs €1.50, 40% less than in Madrid. A Swedish backpacker can stay here for three months for less than a week in the Maldives. In a weaving shop in San Bartolomé, 82-year-old Maria weaves baskets from palm leaves, just as her great-grandmother did for Sanmao, crafting coconut shells to hold water. "The Chinese girl loved to watch the sunset from the pier. She said the twilight here resembled the Sahara." Subtropical sunlight is embedded in the old woman's wrinkles, and the patterns in her weaving are the islands' love letter to the European winter.
When the polar night finally ends in Northern Europe, faded sunscreen marks remain on the beaches of the Canary Islands. But the islands know that the wounds kissed by the sun, the eyes awakened between volcanoes and waves, have etched the islands' warmth into the rings of life. This is not a winter retreat, but another heart of mainland Europe, beating with the hope of daylight at a constant 22°C.