The island capital of Santa Cruz has a full programme of films throughout June, July and August, the biggest of which are staged in the Parque Cultural Viera y Clavico.

Details of individual screenings can be found on the Santa Cruz town hall website, www.sctfe.es

In Los Realejos, the cinema takes to the beach in August with movies being shown on the Playa del Socorro.

Open-air cinema is also part of the Los Realejos programme of activities for the Carmen Festival between July 6-14.

Three films are being shown this week (July 9, 10 and 11) in the Plaza de San Agustín.

More details are on the town hall website at www.ayto-realejos.es

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.

The fiesta programme of events began on April 26 and some, notably the sports tournaments, continue until the end of May.

But the one event that draws extraordinary crowds to the town is the Exhibicíon Pirotécnica, this year on Thursday, May 3.

Two rival manufacturers supply the fireworks for the late-night display, which is generally regarded as being the best anywhere in the Canaries, if not the whole of Spain.

And this is on an island where they need little or no excuse for staging spectacular fireworks displays.

Thursday’s pyrotechnic show will come at the height of the Festival of the Cross, around which the whole of Los Realejos’s month-long celebrations are centred.

The month-long event celebrates the culture and important traditions of the Canary Islands, with the focus on music, costumes and crafts.

The new road, between Adeje in the south west and Santiago del Teide in the north west, is one of the few remaining sections required to complete the island’s equivalent of London’s M25 orbital motorway.

The civil engineering challenges to be faced in the project are huge, with tunnels, viaducts, underpasses and overpasses all figuring in the construction work, which it is estimated will cost a staggering €168,000,000.

Critics of the scheme, led by the environmental lobby, say it will cost much more than that.

The building of another section of the road, between San Juan de la Rambla and Icod de los Vinos, is already well under way and another segment, to connect Santiago del Teide and El Tanque, is due to go out to tender in the near future.

That leaves just one remaining stretch – between Los Realejos, where the northern section of the ring road currently ends, and San Juan de la Rambla – still on the drawing board.

Much of the motorway already in place has been built close to the coast where gradients are much less of a problem than on the Adeje-Santiago del Teide section, which will cross a total of 19 ravines.

His record attempt, mostly over the Atlantic Ocean, will see him endeavour to cover the 1,350km (nearly 840 miles) from Jerez de La Frontera in southern Spain to Tenerife, a journey that will see him flying down the west coast of Africa.

Ramon has timed his record bid to coincide with the third Los Realejos International Paragliding Festival, due to start on Friday (April 27) at Socorro beach in the north of Tenerife.

The holder of five current FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) world records, Ramon now plans to start his epic flight on Monday (April 23), aiming to beat his own existing distance record of 951km.

He will have with him a fuel load of 65kg and special safety equipment that includes a wet suit, life vest, radio beacons, water-activated strobe light, tracking devices and a self-inflating life raft.

The real-time progress of his flight can be followed on www.draconexion.com.

The five-day festival will feature some of the world’s leading exponents of the arts of paragliding, hang gliding and parachuting.

The festival has quickly established itself on the international schedule of paragliding events, due in no small part to the fact that Tenerife offers perfect all-year-round conditions for the sport.

At the first staging of the event two years ago, two new world records were set, one for paramotor altitude at 5,395 metres and the other in acrobatics when 75 manoeuvres were achieved in a vertical tumble of 1,900 metres, massively overhauling the previous record of 30.

The first day of this year’s festival will be devoted to a welcoming party, checking of participants’ credentials and an official opening.

The real fun gets underway the following morning with first take-offs set for 11am.

Among the record attempts planned for this year is a crack at the world paramotor distance mark in which Spanish pilots César Maldonado, Francisco Renedo, Ramón López Santiago and Ramón Morillas will endeavour to fly from Andalucia in mainland Spain to Los Realejos.

The leading Spanish pilots taking part in the festival will be joined by a galaxy of world’ leaders in the sport from Austria, the United States, Venezuela, the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan.

Running alongside the aerial activities will be a series of concerts, which will culminate in a spectacular and colourful pyromusic show as the climax to the closing ceremony.

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.

Some of the smaller towns and villages try to organise their events so as not to clash with the two giant events. But for all of them, carnival follows a traditional pattern of groups of music, dance and sumptuous costumes.

The burial of the sardine is another ritual conducted everywhere, though those in Los Realejos, La Orotava and Puerto de la Cruz are considered to be the best.

Each of the cities, towns and villages sets a theme for its carnival celebrations, this year’s being the ‘World of Fashion’ in Santa Cruz and ‘Paris of the 1920s’ for Puerto de la Cruz.

In La Orotava, the theme for 2007 is ‘Fiestas in Egypt’. The grand parade is on Tuesday, February 20. A parade of vintage cars begins the day’s actitivities at 10am from Plaza de la Constitución.

The carnival parade at 4pm sets out from Cruz del Teide to Plaza de la Paz. The partying carries on long after the parade has finished.

Thursday, February 22 sees a Drag Queen Festival at 9pm in La Orotava, featuring some of the best drag acts from Gran Canaria and Tenerife.

This year’s carnival theme in Los Realejos is ‘Atlantis – the Lost Continent’ and it runs from February 9-21, while in Los Gigantes it runs from March 1-5, the theme for 2007 being Mexico.

Los Cristianos stages one of Tenerife’s smaller carnival celebrations, though it’s still the biggest in the south of the island, from February 20-24, events including a masked ball, children’s carnival queen competition and a parade of horses.

Just as everywhere else, celebrants adorn themselves in the ridiculous, the daring and the unashamedly outrageous, converging on the streets and squares to the rhythms of congas, sambas, rumbas and the more traditional Spanish zarzuela – providing a good chance to take in some songs and dances indigenous to the island.