Within a few minutes, anyway one comes from a climatic zone by car into the next one.
So for example it can happen that you start from the Puerto de La Cruz in the north of the island with cloudy weather and you drive in direction to Bajamar or Tacoronte, only a few kilometers, and you will find sunshine there.

The complete northeast of the island of Tenerife is formed by a rugged area. The massif rises steeply up from the Atlantic, which is forming the precipitous coast. The range of Anaga is abundantly covered with vegetation for the most part and sometimes veiled by clouds.

Places you should visit are the botanic garden and the Loro Parque in Puerto de la Cruz, or the small idyllic mountain village Masca situated in the romantic range of Teno.

Another highlight of Tenerife are the historical centers of La Orotava and La Laguna. For who is interested in winegrowing culture, the wine museum in El Sauzal in the north of the island, would be interesting to visit.

Just a few weeks after the launch of the new tram service that connects the island capital of Santa Cruz with the neighbouring town of La Laguna, the island bus operator, TITSA, has announced a raft of improvements to services in the north of the island.

The frequency of services between the northern town of Icod de los Vinos and Santa Cruz (service 106) has been boosted by an additional eight journeys a day.

Line 363, which runs from Puerto de la Cruz to Buenavista del Norte has been increased from an hourly to a half-hourly service.

In Los Realejos, the new service will operate between San Vicente and Las Llanadas.

The company is pledged to develop more routes to meet government demand to get commuters, shoppers and visitors to the island out of cars and on to public transport.

TITSA island has a reputation for providing cheap and efficient bus services across the island.

Sheffield-born Cocker, who will be 63 by the time of the concert, embarked on a mammoth Europe-wide tour this month that will see him play 34 venues in Spain, Greece, Georgia, Lithuania, Russia, Poland, France, Ireland, England, Holland, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Norway and Denmark in little over two months.

He has two dates in the Canary Islands, in La Laguna on July 10 and Gran Canaria the following day.

Now based in America, Cocker’s musical career goes back over 40 years to his first UK number one in November 1968, a cover version of the Beatles song With a Little Help from My Friends.

He followed it up with Delta Lady but then hit the big time in the States after a storming gig at the Woodstock festival in 1969, where his gravelly voice proved popular, leading to several chart entries.

His career has been interrupted by drugs and alcohol problems but he bounced back in the 1980s and 1990s, notching up a string of hits, most notably Your Are So Beautiful, Unchain My Heart and the classic Up Where We Belong, the Grammy Award-winning song from the movie An Office and a Gentleman, which he performed with Jennifer Warnes.

The set for his European tour will include all of his hits mentioned above, plus other chart successes such as You Can Leave Your Hat On, Cry Me A River, I Put A Spell On You, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window and Maybe I’m Amazed.

Tickets for his Tenerife concert can be ordered online at www.generaltickets.com or at the Pabellon Santiago Martin box office on the day itself. The concert starts at 9pm.

The new light rail system, or Tranvia, as it is known on the island, has been ready to go into service for a week or two now but its inauguration was delayed because of local elections due to take place on May 27.

Officially, the tram service’s political masters did not want to be accused of taking advantage of the opening.

The cynical among you are probably thinking that they might also have considered that voters might not be favourably disposed towards them if the service hit unforeseen snags during its early days of operation.

Tramcars are already a familiar sight in the business centres of Santa Cruz and its near neighbour La Laguna, the two areas linked by the new service.

The metro system is designed to relieve congestion in the two cities, which, unless checked, will cause traffic gridlock in five years time – New tram system to relieve traffic congestion.

The Tranvia was involved in its first accident during trials being carried out in the run-up to the opening when a woman was struck by a moving tram while she was distracted by her mobile phone. Fortunately she was only slightly injured.

The incident led to a number of safety concerns being voiced by some citizens, who claim the trams will be a threat to pedestrians walking along previously traffic-free streets.

The incident has prompted the operators of the new service to embark on a safety campaign in the build up to the opening, reminding citizens and shoppers of the need to be vigilant when walking near the tramlines.

A 7.5-miles line will operate between the island capital of Santa Cruz and the neighbouring city of La Laguna.

The metro system is designed to relieve congestion in the two cities, which, unless checked, will cause traffic gridlock in five years time.

The route of the new service will mean that more than half of the 350,000 population of the two cities will have no more than a five-minute walk to their nearest tram stop.

The overhead electricity power supply to the tramcars will be generated by ten specially-commissioned wind turbines, making it a totally zero-emission system.

Initially, trams will run every five minutes, with a journey time of 37 minutes. Stops are situated every 500-600 metres and the whole line has double track.

The tramcars, built in Barcelona, have been specially adapted to cope with the steep gradients along the route, the track climbing 600 metres in 12km. The 32-metre trams are driven through all six wheels, enabling them to average 20km per hour on the journey. They have a top speed of 70km per hour.

The system will have 20 tramcars available at start up, each capable of carrying 200 passengers, 60 of them seated.

The operators, Metropolitano de Tenerife, expect around 44,000 journeys to be made each day in the first year, removing an estimated 10,000 cars from congested city streets.

Trams will run from 5am-midnight during weekdays and 24 hours a day at weekends and during festivals.

Future plans for the system include an extension taking the line from La Laguna to Tenerife’s north airport at Los Rodeos and a branch line to serve the district of La Cuesta, another heavily populated area.

The years in question are from 1850-1950 and the exhibition includes more than 60 items of clothing that were once worn by men and women of the island, the grandparents, or even great-grandparents of today’s younger generation.

The purpose of the exhibition is to show the rapid evolution in the design and use of materials in that time.

The lingerie items that make up the exhibition are particularly well conserved because many of them have been hidden away in the depths of the museum for many years.

Bodices, girdles, corsets, petticoats, nightdresses and other, more intimate items, including a heavy hand-knitted brassiere worn in the early 1900s, are included in the exhibition, part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of Casa de Carta in Valle de Guerra, La Laguna.

The ‘Letter House’ is an 18th century Canarian family mansion now dedicated to the popular culture of the archipelago, featuring ceramics, furniture and traditional dress down the ages.

The underwear exhibition continues until May 31 and the museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 9am to 7pm. Admission is free.

Easter celebrations in Tenerife are known for their magnificent processions, which take place all over the island throughout the week, though the ones in La Laguna, La Orotava and Puerto de la Cruz are among the grandest.

As the seat of the Bishop of Tenerife, the celebrations in La Laguna are the most important and culminate in the magnificent Magna procession on Viernes Santo (Good Friday, April 6), which starts at 5pm from the church of Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, one of the oldest churches on the island, dating back to 1502.

The Magna procession is followed by the Silence procession, starting at 9pm, in which all the town’s religious brotherhoods take part.

La Orotava’s main event takes place on Maundy Thursday, or Jueves Santo, with the procession of Senor de Columna, which starts at the church of San Juan and ends in the main square in front of the town hall.

Processions of one kind or another take place pretty much every day in Puerto de la Cruz, starting from church of Nuestra Senora de la Pena de Francia.

The town’s Magna procession is on Maundy Thursday, but most impressive of all is the Crucificado procession which takes place before daybreak on Good Friday, starting at 4am.

In Adeje, they stage their own version of the Passion, starting at 12 noon and re-enacting the events leading up to the crucifixion.

It is carried out on a grand scale, with over 300 local people taking part, with the whole of its two hours screened live on Canarian television.

Semana Santa is celebrated in towns and villages across the island, with other important processions taking place in Guimar, Garachico and Los Realejos.

Included in the exhibition of 87 photographs at the Caja Canarias Sala de Arte y Cultura in Plaza de la Concepcion, La Laguna, are portraits of such famous 20th century figures as Picasso, Einstein, Dali, Ava Gardner, Catherine Deneuve and Ernest Hemingway.

Though born in Philadelphia in 1890, Man Ray first honed his artistic talent in New York before spending the biggest part of his working life in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, where his reputation as a fashion and portrait photographer was made, though he preferred to think of himself as an artist.

He went back to the States in 1940 and stayed there until the war ended, returning to his beloved Paris after hostilities ceased and died there in 1976.

The exhibition also includes some of Man Ray’s pioneering ‘rayographs’, a process he is credited with inventing that involves the creation of a photographic image without the use of a camera.

He placed objects on a light sensitive material such as photographic paper and exposed them to light, creating a negative image that very much resembles an X-ray.

The exhibition is open Mondays to Fridays 11am-1pm and 5-9pm and on Saturdays 11am-2pm and 5-8pm.

Also battling for the coveted nomination will be the mainland cities of Cordoba, Cuenca, Cáceres, Burgos, Tarragona, Pamplona, Zaragoza, Segovia, Valencia and Alcalá de Henares.

And while Santa Cruz may not have some of the glamour of its peninsula rivals, it need not feel inferior in any way.

The stunning Auditorio rivals any concert hall anywhere in Spain for sheer architectural magnificence, while the annual carnival is hugely popular both locally and internationally.

It also has in its environs the World Heritage Site of La Laguna and the sheer natural beauty of the Anaga Mountains.

The European Capital of Culture is designated by the European Union for a period of one year during which the city has a chance to showcase its cultural life and development.

A number of European cities have used the City of Culture year to transform their cultural base and, in doing so, the way in which they are viewed internationally.

Conceived as a means of bringing citizens of the EU closer together, it was launched in 1985 and was the brainchild of the Greek Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri.

Since then, the initiative has become more and more successful, having an increasing cultural, social and economic impact on the chosen cities.

Three Spanish cities have so far been honoured – Madrid in 1992, Santiago de Compostela in 2000 and Salamanca in 2002.

Glasgow is thus far the only UK city to be honoured, though Liverpool takes the accolade in 2008.

Thousands saw it, mostly in the east and north of the island, describing a brilliant fireball that flashed across the night sky shortly after 10pm.

It happened on Sunday May 7 and hundreds of people called the Canarian Institute of Astrophysics (IAC) seeking an explanation of the phenomenon.

Because it happened at a weekend there were many witnesses to the unusual event. Sunday had been a fine day on Tenerife and many people were returning to their homes from a day at the beach, in the mountains or with friends and family.

From the many hundreds of eye witness accounts, scientists were able to paint what they believe to be a fairly accurate picture of what happened.

It was around 10.30pm that radio stations on the island broke into their normal programmes to broadcast calls from witnesses who told of having seen a huge light in the sky.

Some said it had the appearance of a meteor but was much brighter, others feared it might have an aircraft crashing in flames.

That latter theory was quickly discounted by aviation authorities, confirming that no aircraft were unaccounted for. The object had not registered on air traffic control, military radar or on any of the many reconnaissance satellites that girdle the earth.

Many witnesses said it had been visible for around five seconds and looked like a comet with a long tail, others that a bright flash of light was seen as it disappeared.

A family in Tegueste reported that the final flash of light was so bright it lit up the inside of their home. An amateur astronomer in Santa Cruz reported hearing a noise, while others spoke of hearing a dull rumble in the distance.

In Puerto de la Cruz, two observers described the light as disappearing to the north. Some spoke of seeing Mount Teide lit up briefly, while in La Laguna reports described watching it disappear over the Anaga Mountains.

After studying the many reports from Tenerife and adding those from eye witnesses in the neighbouring islands of Gran Canaria and La Palma, IAC scientists concluded that it had indeed been a meteor and furthermore they had been able to plot quite accurately its progress across the night sky.

So sure were they of their findings that they were able to say with firm conviction that the meteorite had weighed around half a kilogram, that it had passed over the Atlantic Ocean, had started to burn up between the islands of Gran Canaria and Fuertaventura and travelled north west before exploding and falling into the ocean some 75 miles north of Tenerife.

Any surviving fragments might have yielded further information but they were well out of reach on the ocean floor at a depth of 3,000 metres.

In what is regarded as the biggest air disaster in civil aviation history, a Boeing 747 operated by the Dutch airline KLM began its take off while another 747 belonging to the American carrier Pan Am was still taxiing on the runway.

The airport was shrouded in fog that day, March 27, 1977, a contributing factor in the collision between the two aircraft.

All 248 passengers aboard the KLM plane perished, while just 61 of the 396 on board the Pan Am flight survived.

Ironically, neither flight was due to touch down in Tenerife that day but should have landed instead on the neighbouring island of Gran Canaria, where many of the passengers were due to board a cruise ship.

But a terrorist bombing on Gran Canaria resulted in the aircraft being diverted to Los Rodeos to sit out the threat.

As a result of the accident, sweeping changes were made to international airline regulations and to aircraft operational safety procedures.

Aviation authorities around the world introduced requirements for unambiguous standard phrases for dialogue between pilots and air traffic controllers, with greater emphasis placed on the use of English as a common working language.

On the 30th anniversary of the disaster this month, Spanish, Dutch and American surviving relatives will attend a memorial service, together with representatives of their respective governments, after which the commemorative steel sculpture will be officially unveiled.

The memorial takes the form of a spiral staircase and was designed by the Dutch artist Rudi van de Wint. It will be sited on Mesa Mota mountain in La Laguna, overlooking the scene of the disaster. The memorial service will be held in the Auditorio de Tenerife in the nearby island capital of Santa Cruz.