The Santa Cruz Carnival is held each February and attracts people from all over the world. It is considered the second most popular and internationally-known carnival, after the one held in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1980, it was declared a Tourist Festival of International Interest by the Secretary of State for Tourism. The Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife aspires to become a World Heritage  as a declaration of its status as a World Heritage by UNESCO. In 1987, singer Celia Cruz went to the Carnival with ‘Billo’s Caracas Boys’ - attended by 250,000 people. The concert was registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest gathering of people in an outdoor plaza to attend a concert.

The festivities on the streets of Santa Cruz start on the Friday before Carnival with an opening parade, which reaches its height during the night when thousands of people in fancy dresses dance until the early hours of the next day. The party continues night after night until ‘Ash Wednesday’. That day, people of Santa Cruz celebrate the “entierro de la sardina” (burial of the sardine) and with this event the carnival is officially over. However, the party starts up again the following weekend, known as the weekend of the piñata.

The Carnival of Santa Cruz has been celebrated since the time of the earliest European settlement. In 1605, Gaspar Luis Hidalgo alluded to the habit of reversing the sexes in dress. The journal of Lope Antonio de la Guerra Peña in 1778 includes a dance held in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where he then talked about comparsas (bands playing conga music). In 1783, the Corregidor reported the use of masks “being banned by royal instructions”. In practice, the ban was not carried out and a carnival feature was the mixing of the masked upper class with the common people.