Our mission (saying “mine” would be very restrictive,seeing the number of persons that in these past years have helped me and are still supporting my work) is to “promote the breed Presa Canario, preserving his original denomination and his traditional morphologic and temperamental characteristics”.
With this latest site version published in January 2008,I would like to stress the importance of offering fresh and genuine contents periodically, in order to educate people about the breed and giving the opportunity to further study the most interesting topics related to the Presa Canario breed. For this reason the site will be updated with new content every month from now on.
We are constantly in search of help in order to widen our contents: if you want to contribute to our project you can collaborate with us. If you know English or Spanish very well we are searching for enthusiasts for text translations (you can contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Another way to help us to reach our objectives is to send a secure donation through Paypal to support the maintenance costs of the site and to help our community grow. We also have a non profit online shop which contributes to these objectives. If you like this  site, consider supporting it.


Before starting to describe how the Presa Canario entered my life and how this site was born, I’d like to clarify a point I really care about: I am not a breeder, but just a simple enthusiast of the Presa Canario; the site, therefore, only aims to be a useful tool provided by an enthusiast for other enthusiasts, without any other interest aside the preservation and the betterment of the breed.
About the mid- Nineties, I went to an international dog show, that every year used to take place near where I lived, in Milan,Italy. I was a teenager (born in 1977), but I always had a sincere interest in dogs, and particularly the molosser breeds. Hanging around the show rings, at a certain point, my eyes, that all day had been leaping from one dog to another, stopped suddenly on some dogs I had never seen before. I was astonished by their beauty, their majesty and especially by the tremendous aspect of agile solidity they showed: the muscles of the hindquarters seemed very solid and muscular, the chest looked like that of a body builder, the head was simply impressive.
I don't know why those dogs were at that show, as they were not in competition (being as the Presa was not recognized by the any international organization), They were standing aloof in a corner with a small group of people, so I got closer and asked them: “sorry, what breed is this?”. “Presa Canario” said one of these. I would never forget that name: it was just what I was searching for.
It has not been a long time (about 10 years) but  things then were very different: the Internet was not so spread and I managed to get online occasionally in a pioneeristic Internet Café; also the amount of available information was not even remotely comparable to that of today.
In any case after about two years things were starting to change: at home I had a connection to the Internet,had decided to become a Presa owner,and came up with the idea to create a site dedicated to this breed which impressed me so much. I became the owner of my first Presa Canario, Xuròn de Irema Curtò (just “Tigre” for me), and at approximately the same time the first version of the site was born, in English and Italian, that even if poor as far as graphics were concerned, gave good results: I started to come in contact with other enthusiasts of the breed, just like me, but coming from all the world.
Through the years ElPresa.com became more and more articulated, going through various versions and graphic looks, always in English and Italian, and through dozen of thousands of contacts. The most important aspect was just the ongoing building of the community, made up by the sharing of the experiences and the exchange of information, that took the community up to the present, providing Presa Canario enthusiasts with a common meeting point, making it possible for several people to organize themselves and to share the efforts faced with the breed betterment in mind. For this, I also have to thank my friend Dave Espinoza, who always believed in the project and gave (and is giving) a hand with the English forum moderation.
Since 2004 the site is completely provided also in Spanish, a major improvement considering the origin of the breed and where several breeders and enthusiasts live.
In 2004 and in 2005 I visited the Canaries (Tenerife and Gran Canaria) and met some breeders and enthusiasts of the breed, and I did the same in 2007 but this time through the Spanish peninsula. These experiences helped me to understand the concept of the Presa Canario, a dog that was born in a rural world to be first and foremost a functional animal and  should be preserved as such.
Every day the community and the site are growing and our objective is to inform and educate the highest number of people possible about the genuine characteristics of the traditional Presa Canario.

A sincere thanks for your visit and a warm greeting to all the Presa Canario fanciers!