About Lanzarote

Plenty of readers ask me about the place I live – I guess that’s because I tweet and post about it quite a lot. So I decided to write a post about it for you.

Lanzarote is one of the Islas Canarias (Canary Islands), and has been Spanish since the 1400’s – in fact Columbus stopped here en route to the new world. Contrary to popular opinion, we are nowhere near Spain! We’re as far from Madrid as Madrid is from London! We’re actually just off the coast of Africa, and from where I am typing this to The Saharan coast is just 72 nautical miles.

Although we are a province of Spain, we have a great deal of autonomy, with our own regional government, The Cabildo. We are duty free and have much lower general taxation than the mainland, and we’re also one hour behind them.

The Island

Lanzarote is just 77Km long, and is extremely volcanic, with around 80 coronas covering the whole island. The last major eruption was in 1824, but the volcano type is one which produces slow moving lava, and nobody has ever been killed in an eruption. In places, the earth remains very hot here – in the Timanfaya region you can cook meat by simply digging a hole in the ground!

As you would expect, we have some fabulous beaches, some golden and some with black, volcanic sand. The ocean here enjoys gentle currents and we don’t have jellyfish or dangerous sharks in our waters. Lanzarote’s biggest weakness is a lack of any natural water, and all our water now comes from a desalination plant.

Industry

We don’t really have any industry at all on the island. The economy is driven by tourism, but focused on sustainable tourism. We have no high rise buildings and permission for new tourist complexes is rarely granted, which means most stay well occupied. With a population of just 130,000, we have more tourists on the island everyday than locals!

Weather

Many people have suggested we have the best weather in the world. In the summer, the heat is reduced by the Trade Winds, keeping temperatures in the high 80’s to low 90’s. In the winter, even at night we rarely see less than 60 degrees. We have low humidity, clouds are rare and it hardly ever rains. That’s why most of our plants are cactus!

Lifestyle

Lifestyle here incorporates the best of the Spanish (fun, family, fiestas) and The Canarian (laid back, chilled, relaxed) approaches to life. We work to live, and we get the best out of the time we have to enjoy ourselves, usually outdoors. The ocean plays a big part, and we’re a very sporty bunch of people – with windsurfing and surfing being huge here.

Downsides

There is only one downside, and that’s the lack of a big city with it’s attendant shopping and culture. But the government have even thought of a solution to that! We enjoy a 50% discount on air travel to the mainland. That means we can fly to Madrid, and remember that’s 1000 miles, or the distance from New York to Orlando, for about €35!

I describe living here as living in paradise, what do you think?