Canary Islands The connection to dogs is retained in their depiction on the islands' coat-of-arms. It is considered that the aborigines of Gran Canaria called themselves "Canarios". It is possible that after being conquered, this name was used in plural in Spanish, i.e., as to refer to all of the islands as the Canarii-as. What is certain is that the name of the islands does not derive from the canary bird; rather, the birds are named after the islands. Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the archipelago. Gran Canaria, with 865,070 inhabitants, is both the Canary Islands' second most
Religion in the Canary Islands in Spain before it was occupied by the military of the Franco regime. There are other small religious communities qualified as sects, such as the Church of Scientology (of which its founder L. Ron Hubbard visited the Canary Islands several times between the 60s and the 70s of the 20th century) and the Order of the Solar Temple, among others. Especially singular is the Church of the Guanche People, a neo-pagan religion founded in 2001 that tries to implement the Canarian aboriginal religion as an ethnic religion in the current Canarian society. Religion in the Canary Islands As in the