Solidarity shows of peoples.

The International Folklore Festival Villa de Ingenio was born in 1996 on the initiative of the Cultural Association “Coros y Danzas de Ingenio”, which is a full member of CIOFF Spain, an agency of UNESCO and therefore it has among its main objectives, to work to protect, promote and disseminate traditional and popular culture, promote cultural exchange among the peoples of the world, encouraging artistic creativity attending to respect to people and cultural diversity, rescuing, preserving and spreading tangible and intangible cultural heritage of peoples of the world; placing the image of Ingenio, Gran Canaria and the Canary Islands as a cauldron of popular culture in the world.

The International Folklore Festival in La Villa de Ingenio is celebrated during the last weeks of July and is centered in two sections: The ethnographic conferences, now called Campus of Ethnographic and Folklore from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the festival itself. The folkloric events take place over seven days with performances, parades, exhibitions, intercultural meals, cinema seasons, etc. The wide range of traditional folklore, as rich as varied in themes, musical instruments, dances, colorful clothing; it is a whole for each village, region and country a deep sociocultural and ethnographic construction, which at the same time is and has been the result of many identifying and differentiating processes that have been patented by the uniqueness and idiosyncratic of each place.

Groups from all the continents and over 40 countries have taken part in this festival, nowadays an established event and the most important cultural reference, in its genre, of Canary Islands abroad.