Can you taste seawater, or rather what is left of it after desalination? At Canagua y Energía you can: Aqualia is offering tastings of its new “Alma de mar” sea salts, made from brine and flavoured with lemon, chilli, activated carbon, tomato or wine. They will go on sale soon.
The fair, now in its fifteenth edition and held every two years, takes place in Agüimes (Gran Canaria) on 21 and 22 October. Admission is free. The Cabildo de Gran Canaria promotes it through its Insular Energy and Water Councils, Infecar organises it, and Agüimes town council collaborates. The full programme is on canagua.es, which we couldn’t open directly: what follows comes from Canarias7’s 21 October report.
Nearly 60 companies and institutions are taking part, though the paper’s headline says “more than 60”. For reference, the 2024 edition was held at Infecar in Las Palmas with 89 bodies in the exhibition area. The change of venue and format makes the comparison a weak one, and there is no reason to read a downsizing into it.
On the exhibition floor there is solar and wind, self-consumption, storage and efficiency. On water, technologies for irrigation, conveyance, transport and storage, including a flexible tank holding 1 to 2.5 million litres, and a Japanese ionisation system that produces alkaline water. Projects come from the Plataforma Oceánica de Canarias, the ITC, students from the CIFP Felo Monzón Grau-Bassas and San Cristóbal colleges, Red Eléctrica and Canaragua.
Wednesday’s talks covered integrating renewables in island territories, storage, agrivoltaics, energy communities and new generation and consumption models. Thursday brings smart energy management, floating solar, cybersecurity for water infrastructure and water reuse. There are B2B meetings too, and a Speakers’ Corner where about thirty companies and bodies present.
Cabildo president Antonio Morales noted that clean-energy penetration on Gran Canaria is above 26%, that the island leads in self-consumption, and that the Salto de Chira storage project is central. He also backed offshore wind. “Solo remando juntos alcanzaremos soluciones tecnológicas de vanguardia” (“only by rowing together will we reach cutting-edge technological solutions”), he said. Agüimes mayor Óscar Hernández said water and energy are the core of development in the Southeast.
On Thursday at 18:00 the Canagua y Energía 2026 awards are presented, split between sustainability and energy, and sustainability and water. Among those recognised: FSM Energías (wind, solar and agrivoltaics) in the business category, Rafael Martell Sánchez for a career integrating wind, desalination, storage and farming, CIFP Felo Monzón Grau-Bassas for training water professionals, Transvirgin for managing maritime and industrial wastewater at the Port of Las Palmas, and Baltasar Peñate Suárez for a career in desalination, efficiency and water-cycle innovation.
For anyone living on the islands, the common thread is dependence on desalination plants and the power grid. From sea salts to a 2.5-million-litre tank, the fair is a shop window: how much of what’s on show actually reaches homes, fields and ports will be known later, not after two days of stands.
