Cold Sore Treatment in Gran Canaria

Healthcare in Gran Canaria: what visitors and residents should know

How local care works in Gran Canaria and across Canary Islands, Spain — and where an online doctor fits alongside it.

Gran Canaria is served by the Servicio Canario de la Salud (SCS), the Canary Islands' regional health service, with Spanish the sole official language. State healthcare is run at regional level, so the rules you meet depend on where you are rather than on Spain as a whole. EU, EEA and Swiss visitors holding an EHIC (or a UK GHIC) can use public primary care and emergency departments on the same terms as residents, though you will normally be asked for the card plus photo ID at reception. Outside surgery hours, pharmacies operate a rota — the farmacia de guardia — and the duty pharmacy is posted in the window of every closed chemist. Like the rest of the archipelago, Gran Canaria's distance from the mainland — an Atlantic island off the northwest African coast — means that transfer or repatriation involves air travel and materially longer lead times than anywhere in peninsular Spain. Hospital and specialist capacity is concentrated around Las Palmas in the north, while the great majority of tourist accommodation is in the south around Maspalomas and Playa del Inglés, so the practical distance between where visitors stay and where full urgencias provision sits is significant. The island's tourism runs all year, with a pronounced Northern European winter season of long-stay older visitors, so demand for repeat prescriptions and ongoing-condition care is a constant rather than a summer phenomenon.

• Major European winter sun destination
• Large British and Scandinavian expat community
• Diverse landscapes and microclimates

Areas we cover around Gran Canaria and Canary Islands

An online consultation is not a substitute for emergency care. If you are in Gran Canaria and your symptoms are severe or life-threatening, call 112 or go to the nearest emergency department.