Santa María de Guía de Gran Canaria is a town and a municipality in Las Palmas province of the Canary Islands. It is located on the north side of Gran Canaria island.

The town Santa María de Guía is situated in a valley 2 km (1 mi) from the coast, 19 km (12 mi) west of Las Palmas. The municipality stretches from the coast into the mountainous interior of the island. The GC-2 motorway passes north of the town.

Currently the municipality takes its name from its municipal capital, combined the invocation of its primitive hermitage founded in honor of Santa María de Guía at the end of the fifteenth century.

During the aboriginal stage of the island, which ends in the year 1483, the population nucleus received the denomination of Aguía, corresponding to the existing population in the same location of the historical center and surroundings, and also near the aboriginal from Agaldar, capital of a guanarteme chiefdom. This denomination was maintained until 1555, as indicated in the land and water distribution documents of Gran Canaria, granted after the European conquest of the island.

After the European conquest, the historical nucleus was named as Villa de Guía, simplifying as Guía, and it remained that way throughout the colonial period, until the 19th century. Already in the 19th century begins to predominate the denomination of Guia de Gran Canaria, within a stream of administrative modernization and especially to differentiate it from other homonymous populations such as Guía de Isora, on the island of Tenerife.

Already in the twentieth century and within the period of the Franco dictatorship, on December 28, 1962, the mayor of that time, Rafael Velázquez García, proposed to change the official name to that of Santa María de Guía, incorporating the invocation of the Catholic religious temple existing in the municipality since the 16th century. The change was approved in full by the local corporation on April 26, 1963, subsequently obtaining the approval of the Island Council de Gran Canaria, which had been denied in the first instance, the change being to Santa María de Guía de Gran Canaria by agreement of the Council of Ministers of the Franco government on July 23, 1963.

In 2008, the City Council promoted a debate from the municipal website for neighbors to express their opinion on whether or not to officially retake the name of Guía de Gran Canaria.