Commutable: Will Harris

A pilgrimage to Gran Canaria

When I was younger, my lesbian flatmate and I hatched a plan to travel to Gran Canaria for a week of fun in the sun. The appeal at that time, so far as I can remember, centred around the island’s reputation as a gay mecca and party hot spot. As two of Brighton’s most diehard party monsters, the trip was to be our equivalent of the Hajj, but with the welcome addition of vodka and sausages.
Our grand plan, however, never came to fruition. Maybe it was because we were in the habit of frittering our meagre 20-something wages on Brighton’s own gay scene, or maybe because we were so far in arrears that every knock at the door would send us diving behind our ratty furniture, but one way or another, other expenses took priority.
Flash forward 10 years, and my plimsolls are finally touching the tarmac at Gran Canaria airport, the horizon wavering in 27 degree heat. Far from a party pilgrimage, though, the main reason my partner and I chose Playa de Ingles – a resort town on the southernmost tip of the southernmost of the Canary Islands – as a holiday destination is because we reasoned it was the closest a young gay couple could get to equatorial heat in November without a) breaking the bank, or b) being buried up to our necks in sand for crimes against nature.
The only gay mecca I’m interested in visiting these days, now that I’m over 30 (and therefore, in gay years, practically a museum exhibit), is Waitrose, so the presence of a thriving gay scene on the island has filled me with trepidation. What if it’s noisy? What if there are drunk people staggering around the streets? Or worse; what if I don’t recognise any of the songs playing, like the last time I went to a gay bar with a group of people in their 20s and had to spend all night hopelessly asking, “Is this JLS?”
As it turns out, I don’t have to worry about any of these things. The proliferation of bars, clubs and restaurants that characterise the Gran Canaria scene (most of them clustered in a rambling 1980s shopping centre called the Yumbo Center) take me back to the best aspects of the gay venues I used to haunt. Friendly, happy crowds, drawn together from across Europe and further afield; Belgians sharing beers with Brazilians; Germany and Hungary, together in perfect harmony. The pervading feeling is one of tolerance and bonhomie, overlaid – it is a gay scene after all – with an alluring frisson of hyper-sexuality, all set to the soundtrack of Madonna’s back-catalogue (1993-2005).
Yes, it is noisy (we don’t mind). Yes, there are drunk people staggering around the streets (most nights it’s us). But best of all, I had forgotten that the music pumped on to European dance floors lags about 10-15 years behind ours, so we are effectively dancing to the music of my youth. So I get my pilgrimage after all.