What you can see on the Playa del Águila webcam
There is one camera, streamed live, plus a time-lapse of its last 24 hours that squeezes a whole day of weather into a short film. It belongs to a local weather station at Playa del Águila, and it is set up the way a weather station would want it: to watch the sea, the sky and the wind more than the sand.
Playa del Águila webcam, San Agustín
At the eastern end of San Agustín, this live camera looks out from among the white bungalows and gardens above Playa del Águila. Palms and flat rooftops fill the foreground; on the right the coast runs back towards San Agustín, with buildings along the low cliffs, and most of the frame is Atlantic and sky.
The beach itself is largely hidden below the gardens, so this is a camera for the weather rather than the sand: the colour of the sea, the cloud building or clearing, and how far you can see along the coast. With the light coming from the east, the first hours of the day give the clearest picture.
A small beach with a windsurfing name
Spain's official tourism portal gives Playa del Águila as about a quarter of a mile (430 metres) long and 40 metres wide, with dark sand mixed with boulders, and describes bathing here as windy, with moderate waves. It lies between the main beach of San Agustín and the bay of Bahía Feliz, and that wind has given it a place on the windsurfing map: Bjørn Dunkerbeck, who grew up in the Canary Islands and won a record 42 world titles, has his Gran Canaria windsurf school on this beach.
When to watch Playa del Águila
Gran Canaria keeps the same time as the UK and Ireland, an hour behind mainland Spain, so there is no hour to add or take away. The camera faces south-west, out to sea, so in the morning the sun is behind it and the light is at its clearest; by late afternoon it is looking into the glare, and the time-lapse is the easier way to see how the morning looked. Before a day out on the south coast, a glance at the cloud over the sea and the white water on it tells you whether to pack a windbreak.
Getting to Playa del Águila
The beach lies just below the El Águila estate, off the GC-500 coast road, about a mile (1.6 km) north-east of San Agustín's main beach and three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km) from Bahía Feliz; you can also walk along the seafront from San Agustín. Gran Canaria airport is about 14 miles (22 km) away to the north-east, up the GC-1 motorway. The San Agustín webcam looks along the resort's main beach towards Playa del Inglés from high above the shore.
