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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Which Palma? How to tell the difference between the places in Spain called Palma

Volcanic eruptions on the Canary island of La Palma have put the spotlight on a place which often gets confused with several other important locations in Spain with the word “Palma” in their names. Here’s how to avoid mixing them up.

Which Palma? How to tell the difference between the places in Spain called Palma
From left to right: Palma de Mallorca, the island of La Palma where the volcanic eruption have been happening and the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Photos: Thomas H/Pixabay, Desiree Martín/AFP, Alejandro Perdomo/Pixabay. Satellite images: NASA

The world’s eyes are currently on the small island of La Palma in the Atlantic archipelago of the Canaries after a week of volcanic eruptions which have seen hundreds of homes destroyed and thousands evacuated. 

Most people around the world had never heard of La Palma before, but even in Spain many couldn’t point it out exactly on the map, with some Spanish mainland-based news sources mislabelling the eruption as being in the neighbouring island of Gran Canaria. 

Overseas, the mix-up has been even worse, as several online commentators suggested a volcano had erupted 2,621 kilometres away in Mallorca. 

While some may forgive the mistakes being made abroad, for some islanders from Spain’s two archipelagos – The Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands – it’s not good enough for journalists in Madrid and Barcelona to get it wrong. 

Why is this happening? Well, there are several places in Spain that have the word Palma (“palm” in Spanish) in them. 

Whether for disambiguation purposes or to make sure you don’t book a flight to the wrong part of Spain one day, here’s how to tell apart the main “Palma” places. 

Las Palmas (de Gran Canaria)

This is the capital of the Canary island of Gran Canaria and the most populated city in the archipelago with 381,000 inhabitants. Its name is very similar to La Palma but it’s different in that it’s plural, hence the “s” at the end of each word. 

Many Canary islanders just refer to it as just Las Palmas (located in the map below in the northeastern tip sticking out).

It’s also worth noting that Las Palmas de Canaria is also the name of the province which encompasses four of the eight Canary Islands: Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and tiny La Graciosa…but coincidently not La Palma, which is part of the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.  

The locals from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria are officially referred to as palmenses, although on other islands people usually call them canariones as is the same for all inhabitants of the island of Gran Canaria.

Palma (de Mallorca)

The name of Majorca’s capital is different from La Palma and Las Palmas in that it doesn’t include the definite article (la, female version of “the”) and it is singular (no “s” at the end of article or noun). 

For clarity’s sake, Palma is nowhere near La Palma or Las Palmas, as it’s in the Balearics islands to the east of Spain, and the Canaries are all the way down near the coast of northwest Africa.

City and island officials cannot make their mind up whether to refer to the Balearic capital as Palma de Mallorca or just Palma on everything from street signs to regional websites.

Different governments have changed the nomenclature back and forth three times over the past 12 years.

Some say that the full name confuses tourists who can’t tell the difference between Mallorca the island and Palma the city, with tour operators arguing that foreigners don’t associate the name Palma on its own to Mallorca, thus seeing a drop in holiday packages sold.

Historians and nationalists on the other hand believe the name Palma by itself is more accurate to the city’s Latin origins. 

People from Palma de Mallorca are referred to as palmesanos

La Palma (island)

La Palma is the name for the northwestern Canary island which has been hit by a wave of volcanic eruptions over the past week. 

Its name is different from Las Palmas (de Gran Canaria) in that the article and noun are singular, and distinguishable from the Majorcan capital in that it has “la” in front of Palma. 

There is a longer official name which can be used for disambiguation – San Miguel de La Palma – but nobody really uses it.  

You can also say la isla de La Palma (the island of La Palma) in conversation and when searching for flights (preferably when the eruptions are over). The airport code is SPC, whereas Las Palmas de Gran Canaria’s is LPA and Palma de Mallorca’s is PMI. 

La Palma is known to Canary islanders as La Isla Bonita (The Beautiful Island), which is saying something given the natural wonders found across the archipelago. 

Its attractive villages and cities, superb hiking routes (it’s the greenest of all the islands) and of course its actively volcanic nature make it a memorable destination for many who want more peace and quiet than in neighbouring Tenerife and Gran Canaria. 

It’s well worth a visit once the eruptions have ended, palmeros (as the islanders are known) and the local economy will need it to rebuild homes and restore livelihoods.

In normal times, there are direct flights from London, Amsterdam and a number of German cities, but it’s also possible to fly to nearby Tenerife and catch a short flight over or a ferry which takes 2 to 3 hours. 

Just remember – when you do your search for flights to La Palma, don’t get your palmas in a twist!

Apart from the ones named above, there’s La Palma de Cervelló and La Palma d’Ebre in Catalonia, La Palma del Condado in southern Huelva province and many more.

READ ALSO: Madrileños to gaditanos – What to call the locals from different parts of Spain

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SPANISH LANGUAGE

What is Spain’s inclusive language debate and why is it so controversial?

Plans to change the name of Spain's Congress of Deputies for it to not just be the masculine form has reopened the debate about whether Spanish is a sexist language.

What is Spain's inclusive language debate and why is it so controversial?

Plans to make the name of Spain’s Congress of Deputies more inclusive has reopened a long-running and controversial debate about where the Spanish language (more specifically, its gendered grammar) fits into it all.

For non-native Spanish speakers or those without a grasp on Spanish grammar, some of this might seem a little strange. This is especially true for English speakers as most English nouns, adjectives and definite articles do not use grammatical gender forms like in Spanish.

The proposal, put forward by governing coalition partners Socialists (PSOE) and far-left Sumar, is to change the name of Spain’s Congress of Deputies to make it more inclusive. To do so, they want to change it from El Congreso de los Diputados to simply Congreso, thereby removing the masculine gendered los and -o word ending from the name.

The change would be just one consequence of the wider rewriting of Congressional customs to adapt it to inclusive language. The proposal has been backed by left-wing parties and smaller nationalist groups that support the government, but rejected by the right-wing Partido Popular (PP) and far-right Vox.

In February, a body within the Spanish Congress issued recommendations on the use of inclusive language in official documents, then also with the support of the PP. In September 2023, official co-languages including Basque, Catalan and Galician were adopted for use for the first time.

READ ALSO: Why Spain has allowed regional languages to be spoken in Congress

The grammar behind it all

The clash seems to be grammar versus inclusivity or political correctness. Much of this is rooted in Spanish grammar rules, namely how the masculine form dominates when including both sexes in collective nouns. What does that mean?

Essentially, that because Spanish is a gendered language and nouns are given a gender – el libro (the book) is masculine, for example, and la casa (the house) is feminine.

It gets complicated with collective nouns, in other words, when a group of something (usually people) contains both males and females, the default collective noun in Spanish is almost always the masculine version.

For example, the word for parents in Spanish is padres, which could be understood to just mean dads, even though Spaniards instinctively understand that it can, in many cases, also be used to signify the plural ‘parents’ and include both mother (madre) and father (padre). 

In the case of the Congress, the solution seems to be to simply remove the gendered language. However, in other cases the drive for gender inclusivity actually goes and step further and changes the language itself.

If you live in Spain, you might’ve seen that some people (usually very politically engaged, almost always very left-wing) choose to say, though it is more often written on social media platforms, amigues rather amigos so it isn’t masculine and includes both amigas and amigos, the feminine and masculine forms of friends.

This trend is in many ways similar to moves in the United States to use a gender neutral form for Latinos and Latinas, Latinx, something that receives a lukewarm response from most Latinos themselves.

Backlash from Spain’s language academy

The steps to make language more inclusive has received backlash from the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) over the years, which, among other things, criticises attempts to do away with the exclusive use of the generic masculine when referring to people of both sexes, claiming it could “increase the distance with the real world” of the language used in institutions. In other words, politicians adopting politically correct language that real Spaniards don’t use on the street.

The Royal Spanish Academy suggests that “inclusive language” is a wider strategy that aims to avoid the generic use of the grammatical masculine, something the academy (the body entrusted to safeguard the Spanish language) states to be “a mechanism firmly established in the language and that does not involve any sexist discrimination.”

However, it should also be said that the demographic makeup of RAE members is, as one might’ve guessed, not as representative as it could be.

Yet the argument by RAE and many in Spain, particularly on the political right, is essentially that efforts to make language more inclusive is politicisation of non-political grammar rules.

An academy note from February stated that “artificially forcing” the grammar and lexicon of the Spanish language to fit political correctness does necessarily advance the democratic struggle to achieve equality between men and women.

A far-left policy?

Perhaps the most public proponent of making the Spanish language more inclusive is Irene Montero, the highly divisive former Equalities Minister who was member of Unidas Podemos, a far-left party. For Montero, changing gendered nouns in Spanish is not just about removing the traditional masculine collective noun, but also making language more inclusive for non-binary people.

The Minister stated in an interview in 2021 that the use of “hije” (the ‘gender neutral’ version of hijo/hija, meaning son or daughter) is to refer to non-binary people who, Montero said, “have every right to exist, even if it is strange and difficult to understand”.

For Montero and proponents of more inclusive language, “there is nothing more political than the use of the neutral masculine gender” and changing words serves “to modify habits or prejudices”.

“It is no coincidence that the masculine has been used as something neutral and women have reclaimed the language so it speaks for us. If we contribute on an equal footing with men in essential tasks we have every right to be named [properly] and the same happens with the LGTBi collective,” she said.

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