Geography of Fuerteventura

Fuerteventura is, geologically, the dean of the archipelago. On the coast of Ajuy, next to Puerto de la Peña, the turbidites of the African sedimentary crust come to the surface — the oldest materials in the Canaries and the only exposure of the oceanic platform in the islands: a true geological treasure. The island edifice began to form beneath the sea about 80 million years ago, although the first subaerial volcanic manifestations date from about 20 million years ago. Two great units can be distinguished on the island: the basal complex, formed by plutonic rocks and submarine lavas, and the later volcanic series, which run from the shield volcanoes of Jandía and the Central Edifice to the recent badlands of Bayuyo and La Arena in the north, the Gairía Caldera, the Jacomar group and the Malpaís Grande and Chico. Unlike other islands, Fuerteventura has no historical volcanoes: it is an old land, smoothed by millions of years of erosion.

With some 1,660 square kilometres, Fuerteventura is the second largest island of the archipelago and, at the same time, the most arid. Its climate combines desert-arid and steppe-arid types, with an annual isotherm of around 19-20 ºC and rainfall below 200 millimetres over almost its whole surface, except the highest areas of the interior and of the Jandía peninsula. Geographers divide the island into six great physiographic units: the northern district, the north-eastern coastal plain, the central plain, the eastern valleys and cuchillos, the Betancuria massif and the Jandía peninsula. The result is the great island of horizontality: broad plains, gentle volcanoes and a very long coastline.

The Betancuria massif, in the west-central interior, is the ancient heart of the island. It is dominated by the basal complex, an assemblage of gabbros, syenites, peridotites and diorites — basic and ultrabasic materials between 20 and 17 million years old — greatly smoothed by intense erosion. Within it lies the cone sheet of Vega de Río Palmas, a circular mesh of dykes inserted into the basal complex, and in several stretches of the Ajuy ravine oases of Canary palms grow together with tamarisks. Much of this territory is protected as the Betancuria Rural Park and the Ajuy Natural Monument, and it holds the historic town of Betancuria, the first island capital, and the church of Vega de Río Palmas, which keeps the Virgen de la Peña, patron saint of the island.

The southern end is occupied by the Jandía peninsula, the remnant of one of the ancient shield volcanoes, culminating in Pico de la Zarza, the island's highest point at 807 metres. It is joined to the rest of the island by the isthmus of La Pared, a narrow sandy corridor less than five kilometres wide; the place name recalls the wall that once separated the old Dehesa de Jandía, described in the eighteenth century as an uncultivated, unpopulated space of pastures and springs. The windward side plunges towards the beach of Cofete, whose hamlet appeared in the mid-twentieth century as "generally abandoned throughout the year", while the leeward coast lines up the great sand sheets of the Sotavento beaches, next to valleys such as Vinamá, Butihondo or Esquinzo.

Between Betancuria and the eastern coast stretch the central plains and the eastern valleys and cuchillos, elongated ridge-like interfluves — such as the protected Cuchillos de Vigán — separated by wide, gently sloping ravines that resemble ramblas more than the deeply incised gorges of the western islands. In the north, Tindaya mountain, with its famous podomorph engravings, presides over a district of plains such as Esquinzo, badlands and herding ravines like those of Jarugo, La Muley or Tebeto, where corrals, gambuesas and dividing walls testify to centuries of grazing.

The north-east wind carries marine sands that form the jables, sand fields such as that of Corralejo, at whose end unfolds the Corralejo Dunes Natural Park, with more than 2,600 protected hectares. Facing it rises the islet of Lobos, also a natural park with almost 470 hectares, and along the coast follow other protected spaces such as the Saladar de El Matorral, a site of scientific interest. Beaches, low cliffs, ravine deposits and both active and fossil dune formations make up a coastline of great ecological value and, at the same time, highly vulnerable to erosion and human pressure.

Water scarcity has shaped Fuerteventura's geography as much as volcanism. The peasants devised the gavias, plots enclosed by earthen walls that capture runoff water, and built maretas, ponds and dams such as Las Peñitas, in the ravine of Vega de Río Palmas, next to which dry dams can still be recognised. The aquifers became salinised early on through the intensity of their exploitation and today supply less than 5 per cent of urban and tourist consumption, which is covered by seawater desalination plants. The same constant wind that brought the sand today drives the wind farms of Cañada de la Barca and Cañada del Río and sustains sailing and surfing sports.

On this arid base thrives a steppe vegetation of the basal belt — euphorbias, kleinias and launaeas — with halophilous and psammophilous species along the coast, and a singular fauna headed by the houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata fuertaventurae), the shearwaters, the ospreys and the Egyptian vultures known as guirres. Human geography answers the environment: the capital, Puerto del Rosario — the former Puerto de Cabras — concentrates services and the port, historic Betancuria preserves the memory of the first European settlement in the interior, and the rest of the population has traditionally been scattered in villages and hamlets, from Taca, Jarugo or Tebeto in the north to the small clusters in the valleys of Jandía, on an island where distances, water and pasture have always ordered settlement.