Global (transport company)

In antiquity, Gran Canaria was populated by the North African Canarii, who may have arrived as early as 500 BC.

In the medieval period, after over a century of European incursions and attempts at conquest, the island was conquered on 29 April 1483, by the Crown of Castile, under Queen Isabella I. The Canarian queen Abenchara was captured and imprisoned by the Spanish during the conquest. The conquest succeeded after a war that lasted five years, and it was an important step towards the expansion of the unified Spain.

The capital city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria was founded on 24 June 1478, under the name "Real de Las Palmas", by Juan Rejón, head of the invading Castilian army. In 1492, Christopher Columbus anchored in the Port of Las Palmas (and spent some time on the island) on his first trip to the Americas. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is, jointly with Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of the autonomous community of the Canary Islands. Much of Iberian migration to the island consisted of conversos of Jewish origin.

On 27 March 1977, a bomb went off in Gran Canaria Airport, the main airport on the island. Flights were diverted to the nearby Tenerife Airport: this led to the Tenerife airport disaster.

In the 1960s, Gran Canaria was selected as the location for one of the 14 ground stations in the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) to support the NASA space program. Maspalomas Station, located in the south of the island, took part in a number of space missions including the Apollo 11 Moon landings and Skylab. Today it continues to support satellite communications as part of the ESA network.