santa-cruz-carnivalSanta Cruz de Tenerife has launched a bid to have the annual Carnaval designated a World Heritage treasure by Unesco.

The city council plans have been in the pipeline for the past six months, and they hope to earn the designation within two years. An initial budget of €400,000 has been earmarked for the campaign to lobby the appropriate bodies to support the application.

Only five carnivals in the world, of which just one is in Europe, have been awarded heritage status, although surprisingly nei¬ther Rio de Janeiro nor Notting Hill figures on the list.

Deputy mayor Ángel Llanos says inclusion on the list would give the Santa Cruz Carnaval mas¬sive publicity throughout the world. To help the bid, work on the city’s €3,000,000 carnival museum is to be speeded up. Santa Cruz is not the first city in Spain to seek the Unesco nomina¬tion. Cádiz announced a month ago it had com-menced work on a similar project, although it has set a deadline of 2012 for the designation.