Bus – Guagua

In this guide you will find just information on line buses ruled by TILP that means bus information about public bus you can get as a tourist; the others guaguas are for large groups and probably hired by tour operators.

So basically in Canary Island buses are a called guaguas (plural form of guagua). This is the same name they use in Cuba Island and probably a transcription of Wa & Wa Co. Inc. (Washington, Walton, and Company Incorporated). Check this spanish wikipage.

I’ve been trying to merge my technological view with my South Europe culture.

Please note than local people call the island just La Palma (without San Miguel de la) and shorten the capital to Santa cruz (without de la Palma); I also heard elder people referring to the capital as La Palma. That’s quite confusing, I know! More over local people refer to Gran Canaria Island with the name of his capital, Las Palmas but they omit the ending S of the name (/s/ is debuccalized to /h/ , chek this Wikipedia Page  ) that’s sounds pretty identical to the name of La Palma.

So local people will never call it bus in any case.
In Saint Miguel de la Palma there’s no other mean of public transport, no trains, no trams etc… but taxis that I rarely use and are quite cheap compared to European standards.

So I’m on bus stop (es: “parada de guagua”) right now and a foreign English speaking person has just ask me for some information about the bus being late. So this guide is meant to all non local people, expecially tourists, that are crazy about times tables, bus stops, tickets and so on.

Types of bus

There are 4 types of guagua

• Line buses (white and red are the old one or from 2019 in green colour) ruled by TILP
• Touristic bus (dark red colour) ruled by TILP
• Touristic bus (orange colour) ruled by other companies
• School bus 🚸 (mainly orange colour) ruled by other companies