La Palma Island, designed by UNESCO one of the 533 "biosphere reserves" of the world, is in the north-west part of the archipelago of the Canaries and forms part of the named Macronesy, together with the archipelagos of the Azores, Cape Verde and Madeira. Different from other islands of the archipelago, La Palma is endowed by nature with plenty of water; it also has unique forests, an exceptional climate and deep ravines and steep slopes. On the coast the mean annual temperature is 20 Celsius degrees. In Summer, at a height of 600-700 metres the temperature is, sometimes, over 30 degrees.  It is rightly said that La Palma is a continent in miniature.

This island together with Tenerife, La Gomera and El Hierro make up the province named Tenerife whereas Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria make up the one named Las Palmas, which is also the name of the capital of the island of Gran Canaria.
The area of La Palma is 706 km2 wide and there are about 82,000 inhabitants spread out through 14 municipalities. Santa Cruz de La Palma is the capital of the island.

La Palma, originally named by its local inhabitants "Benaohare", was always considered a cultured island. Castilian, Catalonian, Majorcan, Portuguese, Italian people began to come to the island after the conquest in 1492 by the Crown of Castilian. At the height of the 16th century the first sugar refineries are installed in El Valle de Aridane - today the economic centre of the island and its largest town -, and Los Sauces, and La Palma became a main exporter. The wine is also very famous, especially the celebrated Malvasia, mentioned by Shakespeare and other writers of his time.

Today you can see beautiful civil and religious buildings in Santa Cruz de La Palma and other villages, There is of course a tourist 'image' of the Canaries and its beautiful beaches; but because of  its geography La Palma does not have in fact a lot of beaches. In La Palma you can find a lot of Flemish paintings and very valuable images brought to the island by the major historical families who were wealthy as a result of the powerful economic relationship established after the conquest, when the harbor of Santa Cruz de La Palma became one of the most important of the Empire of Felipe II (Philippe the Second). Its development continued, and the cultural and educational development was more relevant and socially diverse from the XVIII century and from the second half of the XIX onward in particular.

From recent decades La Palma is known worldwide because there are installed several important telescopes in a wonderful place of its geography. They integrate the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, which was inaugurated in 1985 and belongs to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. The Roque de los Muchachos has an altitude of 2423 meters, and is next to the Nature Reserve of the Caldera de Taburiente. This Observatory offers exceptional conditions for the night observation, the Solar Physics and the High Energy astrophysics; these conditions are considered the best of the North Hemisphere. The extraordinary quality of the sky for the astrophysics observation has done that establish in it telescopes of a great number of countries.

The Symposium will be held in the historical Teatro Chico (The Small Theater). This theater occupies a part of an old church which belonged to the Hospital of Dolores founded in 1527 and later on set on fire. Later in the place of the hospital was developed the market of the city. The basic idea of which left in the work developed in 1866 was of getting the total concealment of the factory of the Oratory, so that it was impossible to recognize the sacred character of the building.
     The Small Theater was created later on, in 1866, after being requested by the neighbors to the City council for room of dances and public shows, and later on restored in 1981. It constitutes, in the interior, an Italian theater in miniature while the exterior is divided in three bodies. It is lifted on masonry walls in rough stone without working and completely whitewashed. Between 1981 and 1984 they are carried out the last changes: facilities of security, of protection of fires and of reparation. The structure of the interior is slight, supported by the walls of the primitive church, and it is decorated by allegorical types with evocations of the Music and the Theater.  The orchestra's moat, in the scenario, is of reduced dimensions.

• Some pictures and information found in the website of this symposium were drawn from the booklet La Palma on Your Hand, by Juan José Santos (Fuencaliente, La Palma, 2007), which we reproduce with the kind permission of their author.