Canary Islands flag

A Spanish archipelago off Africa, with a regional flag of its own.

The Canaries are seven main islands (plus tiny La Graciosa) roughly 100 km off the north-west coast of Africa and about 1,000 km from mainland Spain. They have been Spanish since the 15th century and since 1982 form an autonomous community, a self-governing region with its own parliament. Spanish is spoken, the euro is used, and the islands are famous for mild weather all year, volcanic landscapes, Teide on Tenerife (Spain's highest mountain) and winter-sun holidays for visitors from Britain, Germany and the Nordic countries.

The flag has three vertical bands: white at the pole, then blue, then yellow. The colours join the flags of the islands' two provinces, Santa Cruz de Tenerife (white and blue) and Las Palmas (blue and yellow). The official version carries the coat of arms in the middle: seven islands under a crown, two dogs on either side and the motto "Océano". The plain tricolour without arms flies everywhere, and emoji artwork shows one or the other depending on the platform. A version with seven green stars on the blue band is the flag of the Canarian independence movement; it has no emoji.

Flag emoji are built from two-letter country codes, and the Canaries have one of their own, IC, because the islands sit outside the EU customs and VAT area and need a separate code on customs paperwork. That is why they got a flag emoji in 2015 while regions such as Catalonia or Andalusia, which have no code, did not.

What does it mean when someone sends it?

Home, roots or the place where the holiday is.

Canarians use it the way others use a national flag: beside their name, often next to 🇪🇸, or alone when the point is the islands. People who grew up there and moved to the mainland or abroad use it for homesickness and local pride. Visitors use it as a location tag, with flight dates, sunsets and beach photos.

It fills feeds on 30 May, Día de Canarias, the regional holiday marking the first sitting of the Canarian Parliament in 1983, when schools hold folk-dress days and flags hang from balconies. It also appeared in messages of support when the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted on La Palma in autumn 2021.

The tone is warm and relaxed. The plain white-blue-yellow flag is the official flag used by everyone, so on its own it says nothing about independence; only the seven-star version carries that message.