Silent Area Coworking in Las Palmas

Remote workers and freelancers make up a large part of the community here, and the setup follows from that: a desk in every private room, a silent area coworking room at the U32 Headquarter, and a fast line in all three of our houses in Las Palmas. Which one you use depends on the hour rather than the day. Calls happen in your room, focused work in the silent area, and everything else depends on whether you feel like a terrace, a sofa or the dining area.

Your Own Desk, in Your Own Room

Every room has a desk, an office chair and an external monitor. That is where calls belong: the door closes, nobody walks through the frame, and you can talk at a normal volume. It also means the shared workspace can stay silent, because the one thing that makes an office loud already has a place to go. The desk setup in every room is listed with the rest of what a stay includes.

Silent Area Coworking at U32

On the middle floor of the U32 Headquarter there is a coworking room with eight desks, every one of them with an office chair, and three of the eight are height-adjustable. The room is a silent area: no calls, no speakerphone, music through headphones. That is the part most coworking spaces cannot offer, because they have to house calls and conversation in the same room. It is open all day, there is nothing to book and nothing extra to pay. Residents of P21 and J48 use it too, a few minutes' walk away, and some of them prefer exactly that walk, because it puts a door between home and work.

A white shelf in the room holds a keyboard, a mouse and mousepads to borrow, and it is also where anything left lying around in the common areas ends up, so it is the first place to look for a missing cable. On Sahara dust days the air purifier runs here as well, which is covered in the Calima article.

Walk and Work

Under one of the three height-adjustable desks lies a walking pad: raise the desk, set the pad to a slow speed, and a morning of writing or reviewing turns into a few kilometres on foot without costing a minute of the working day. Under another stands an under-desk bike, which does the same thing sitting down. Both are part of the sport equipment, free to use and nothing to reserve.

The Internet

U32 and J48 run on a 1000 Mbit line, P21 on 500. At U32, where most residents live, each person gets up to 100 Mbit, which carries video calls and large uploads and keeps one heavy user from slowing down the house. Six hotspots spread over the building mean the connection holds in the rooms, not only next to the router.

Terraces, Living Room and Dining Area

Every terrace has a parasol, a table and chairs to work at, and at U32 and J48 there are power sockets outside as well. The sun terrace at U32 keeps its working corner next to the sunbeds, one level above the sport terrace. P21 adds its hanging chair, and J48 has a mirador looking over half of Gran Canaria. Some people skip the table altogether and work from the sunbed.

Indoors there are two more places people actually use: the sofa in the living room at U32 and J48, which is the more comfortable seat for a long read, and the dining area, which is the more sociable one. When in doubt, there is an option here for every mood.

Remote Work from Gran Canaria

Gran Canaria runs on Western European Time: the same clock as London and Lisbon, one hour behind Rome, Berlin, Paris and Madrid. Most residents here stay for at least a month, which makes a proper desk, an external monitor and a routine worth setting up. Whether that fits you is its own article: is this place right for you.

What It Is Not

The coworking area comes with a room. There is no day pass and no separate desk fee, and everyone working in it lives here. Coffee, tea and filtered water are included and self-serve, which is the one thing a coworking membership elsewhere would charge you for: coffee, tea and filtered water.