Tenerife Has Its Carnival Queen: Featured in Yahoo

The Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, one of the biggest in the world, has its purple and white feather, glitter and gold-clad queen after a colourful contest at a gala night that ran into the early hours of Thursday.

Nineteen women competed for the top prize, wearing tall, dazzling dresses with names of their own -- "the night", "kiss me" or "at dawn, I will conquer", all of them several metres high and weighing dozens of kilos.

Residents in Tenerife, one of the islands in Spain's Canaries archipelago, prepare the carnival for months -- an age-old tradition which annually draws tens of thousands of devotees, including tourists.

The gala night to pick the queen in the island's capital Santa Cruz de Tenerife is one of the carnival's biggest events, broadcast live by regional and national television.

At the start of the gala, giant, illuminated replicas of jelly fish, dolphins and fish sailed through the audience, immersed in a dreamy representation of the deep sea.

Now that the queen has been elected, music, dance and street parades will get into full swing.

The carnival began on February 1 and ends on March 10.

Queen of the Carnival of Santa Cruz shows off her outfit on the main stage during carnival celebrations in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, on the Spanish Canary island of Tenerife

The dresses can be more than five metres (yards) high and weigh over 80 kilos (176 pounds)

The Carnival of Santa Cruz is an age-old tradition that annually draws tens of thousands of spectators

The gala night to pick the carnival queen is broadcast live by regional and national television

This year there were 19 nominees for Queen of the Carnival of Santa Cruz