Geography of Lanzarote

Lanzarote is the easternmost island of the Canaries and one with the least pronounced relief in the whole archipelago. Its peculiar physiognomy is due to the different eruptive periods it has experienced: the oldest materials form the mountain massifs located at the extremes of the island, Famara in the north and Los Ajaches in the south, while the most recent volcanic episodes correspond to the eruption of the La Corona volcano, more than fifteen thousand years ago, and the great lava field of Timanfaya, created between 1730 and 1736. The result is a low, arid territory of extraordinary plasticity, whose summit, Peñas del Chache, barely reaches 671 metres in the Famara massif.

The symbolic heart of that geography is Timanfaya. The eruptions of 1730-1736 buried entire villages and farmlands under lava and ash and generated an extensive badland now protected by Timanfaya National Park, with its aligned cones known as the Montañas del Fuego (Fire Mountains). This almost planetary-looking landscape was incorporated into the visitor experience with the creation of the volcano route in 1968 and the El Diablo restaurant, a work by César Manrique located in the very heart of the park, coinciding with the opening of the island's airport to international charter flights.

The north of the island is dominated by the Famara massif, Lanzarote's oldest and most rugged relief. Its cliff drops abruptly to the sea, and since 1973 its upper edge has held the Mirador del Río, a strategic site that previously belonged to the army and from which one contemplates one of the island's most striking views: the Chinijo Archipelago. At the foot of the cliff, Famara beach unfolds all its beauty at low tide, when a thin layer of water reflects the sky and the escarpment, and it is a regular pilgrimage site for water-sports enthusiasts. At the opposite end, the Los Ajaches massif presents a gentler orography, and on its seaward face, in the unspoilt, protected area of Punta del Papagayo, coves of white sand and crystal-clear waters lie hidden.

Between the two massifs stretches El Jable, a singular plain in the centre of the island forming a kind of corridor of organogenic sands deposited by the wind, from Caleta de Famara, at the north-western tip, to the eastern side along the coast of Tías. Far from being a sterile space, Lanzarote's farmers learned to reuse this sandy strip for agriculture by applying the enarenado technique, and crops such as sweet potato and watermelon became frequent on the jable.

La Geria is the most renowned of the island's agricultural landscapes and one of the most ingenious human responses to the volcano. Created in the vicinity of Timanfaya, its origin goes back to the last lava emissions, when the fertile ground was covered by lapilli or picón. Observing that vegetation sprouted again over time, the farmer dug hollows down to the vegetal substrate, planted vines and fig trees inside them and protected each plant with a semicircular dry-stone wall. The picón retains ambient humidity, acts as an insulator against temperature changes and protects the soil from torrential rains; given its advantages, the system was extrapolated to other sites lacking picón, giving rise to the well-known enarenados.

Lanzarote's environmental factors are characterised by their harshness: a semi-desert climate is compounded by an energetic, constant wind, responsible for the absence of a tree stratum, so that low-growing species such as tabaibas, aulagas and scrub predominate, together with the Canary palm and fruit trees planted by man. The lack of water historically marked island life: the population depended on the maretas and aljibes (cisterns) that stored rainwater, and the council records register crises such as that of 1781, when scarce rainfall left little water in the maretas and drove up the price of the island's meagre foodstuffs. Aljibes were assets so valuable that they appear bought, sold and inherited in notarial protocols.

Lanzarote's coastline gathers some of the archipelago's most celebrated landscapes. At El Golfo, the Charco de los Clicos forms an astonishing green lake over a volcanic crater open to the sea; nearby boil Los Hervideros, and at the Janubio lagoon its famous salt pans can be admired from the lookout. Off Órzola, the Chinijo Archipelago — composed of La Graciosa and other islets — constitutes a natural park of some 700 square kilometres that hosts the largest marine reserve in Europe; La Graciosa, its only inhabited island, is reached by a ferry crossing of about twenty minutes to Caleta del Sebo, where the streets remain free of asphalt.

Human geography completes the picture. The historic capital was the Real Villa de Teguise, but in 1852 the capital status moved to Arrecife, driven by the commercial activity of its port, which turned the city into the gateway for inhabitants, visitors and goods. In recent decades, tourist expansion has concentrated on the coast, with centres such as Puerto del Carmen, in Tías, or Playa Blanca, in Yaiza, and with especially strained areas between Arrecife and Tías, the south of Yaiza, the north and south of Teguise and the southern coast of Haría. Against that growth, the model of sustainable intervention promoted by César Manrique from 1966 was decisive in UNESCO declaring Lanzarote a Biosphere Reserve in 1993.