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Canaries Population Growth in 250 Years

Population statistics

Data from a study published by the Instituto Canario de Estadística (ISTAC) (Canarian Statistics Institute), reveals that, in the last quarter of a millennium, the overall population of the Canary Islands has multiplied by thirteen. The study shows the growth in the Canary Islands' population since the first modern census in the history of the archipelago, the Census of Aranda in 1768, the first which counted all of the members of the population and not just heads of families.

At the time of that 1768 census, there were 155,763 people living in the Canary Islands. By 1797, the number had risen to 173,865. At the beginning of the 20th Century, in 1900, it was 364,408, which has risen to almost two million today.

An interesting piece of information derived from this, is with 283,931 "outsiders" (142,375 from other parts of Spain and 141,556 foreigners) living in the islands in 2001, the remaining population growth of 1.3 million over the last century must be due to the expansion of the "native population" itself and, firmly refutes the widely held belief that immigration alone is responsible for the explosion.

Tenerife and Gran Canaria have always been the most populated islands of the archipelago, with Gran Canaria occupying first place between 1940 and 2001.

Historically, La Palma had been the third most populated island and, had remained so until as recently as 1998, when Lanzarote took over that position.

The most populated city, since 1768, has been Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, except in 1910, when Santa Cruz in Tenerife took over the title briefly. The second most inhabited city was La Laguna, in Tenerife, back in 1768, Telde in Gran Canaria from 1787 to 1842 and Santa Cruz in Tenerife from 1857, until the present day. Santa Cruz' population, back in 1768, had numbered a mere 7,399. By 2005, it had multiplied almost thirty times to 221,567. The population of Arona, has multiplied by almost 38, from 1,516 in 1768, to 57,445 in 2005.

In more rural areas, such as in the municipality of Buenavista del Norte, which had 1,376 inhabitants in the 18th Century, have merely quadrupled its numbers to it's highest point of 5,664 in 1996. Since then, the population has actually been slowly dropping, to 5,300 in 2005. In some rural districts on the island of La Gomera too, the population has only doubled in those 250 years.

Despite the population growth, the number of homes only multiplied by 9.6 in the 233 years, from 57,218 in 1768 to 552,497 in 2001. Average family size has dropped from 4.2 in 1842, after reaching a peak of 4.8 in 1920, to 3.1 in 2001.

One Year On: The Day That Delta Dawned

Delta Dawn
Dawn sky over Tenerife on Monday, November 28th, 2005.

Today is the first anniversary of Tropical Storm Delta that whipped through the Canary Islands on November 28th and 29th, 2005. Later denominated as an Extratropical Cyclone, though the precise distinction in terms is lost on the "ordinary folk" of these islands. Whatever it was, we remember it for the wake of damage it left, valued at $364+ million, with 7 deaths and 12 disappeared.

Delta was the worst storm that these islands have suffered and local media cannot help but comment on it again today and point out that residents in the Canary Islands still live with the fear that that something similar could happen again. The question, of course, is whether these islands are prepared.

Despite the alerts, nobody took it seriously enough and, for the most part, Delta took the Canary Islands almost completely by surprise. Some 200,000 people in Tenerife, the hardest hit, were left without electricity, a number were also without water and, some of those lacked these basic services for up to a week.

Many point to the lack of provision for such emergencies in the archipelago, remembering that most of the population was left without electricity at some point and that there were no generators on the islands to cope with the situation.

Many suffered damages and loss of electrical appliances, frozen food had to be thrown away, agriculture and business suffered huge financial losses.

Electric tower fallen. Photo: Mataparda

One of the most impacting images was that of the fallen electrical pylons, found to be in an "elevated" state of oxidation. Several towers were brought down by the high winds alongside the TF-1 motorway, causing chaos, not just with the electrical supply, but also with the traffic. Finally, yesterday, the parliamentary commission set up to investigate the response to Delta, decided unanimously, that responsibility for bad management falls jointly upon both central and Canary Islands administrations, as well as the electricity company, Unelco-Endesa, for the weaknesses in the Canarian electrical supply system.

Some are interpreting that decision as good news, but I think my friend Bernardo Sagastume at ABC gives us the best analysis on the subject, saying that, "those culpable ... are various and, at the same time, nobody." That was my reading of it too: the commission has been seen to have done it's job, just about, but it carefully avoided upsetting anyone in particular. That is hardly the way to make changes that will really improve the situation for the future.

In particular, the commission's report does recognize that the electrical pylons were in a poor state and only capable of half their designed capacity - for which Unelco was sanctioned - yet, the conclusions of the report fail attribute blame on Unelco for the resultant, prolonged, up to seven days, power outages in Tenerife.

Only the politicians themselves seem to be satisfied with the outcome and, as one would expect here, they also seem to have spent time arguing over what to call the storm, some claiming it was really a hurricane of force 3 or 4. 

Central to the issue, of course, is whether the storm should be termed "de fuerza mayor" - what English speaking insurers, even atheist ones, call an "Act of God" - because from that depends who (if anyone) will pay out to those affected.

Specifically too, the estimated damages reported earlier and mentioned in the reports at Wikipedia (English | Spanish), were all well in excess of $300 million (228 million euros at today's rate). Nevertheless, the commission has now valued the global damages caused by Delta at merely 41.7 million euros ($54.8 million).

As to the future, the new president of Unelco, José María Plans, says that energy distribution has improved from the "critical" state it was in a year ago, but the archipelago continues to require new power stations to diversify risks.

We all hope that there will never be another storm of the like of Delta in the Canary Islands, but merely hoping would be foolish in the extreme. Unfortunately, from these conclusions, Canary Islanders are still left merely hoping that what the authorities might do to prepare, if it does occur, is enough and in time.

Caves in Tenerife

Teno Caves

There is a whole world of caves in Tenerife, since the aboriginal inhabitants, the Guanches, preferred dwelling in caves. Cave homes still exist in some areas, like Chinamada, and remained in use until the recent past.

The typical situation in antiquity was to use the caves on the sunny side of a valley for habitation caves and those on the shaded side for burial caves. Often, but not always, bodies were mummified. In 1526, a man named Thomas Nichols explored a cave containing approximately four hundred mummies. In 1770, a cave containing 1,000 mummies was located between the towns of Arico and Güímar in Tenerife and, in 1773, a smaller mummy cave was found.

These volcanic isles have no karst caves, but several lava tubes and a huge amount of mostly artificial volcanic caves. Whilst some caves have been turned into tourist theme parks, many others are not accessible to the public, so expert guidance should be sought before rushing here to explore their murky depths.

There are many caves around the area of Güímar, such as, "The Cueva del Cañizo, an aboriginal cave that was the summer residence of the Menceyes (Chiefs) of Güimar, is in the ravine. It gets its name from the network of tubes inside it." Once thought to be the largest volcanic cave in the world, is the extraordinary Cueva del Viento (Cave of the Wind), near Icod de los Vinos in Tenerife. There are guided tours available. One of the most famous caves of Tenerife, writes Jochen Duckeck at ShowCaveBlog, is the Cueva de Bencomo in La Orotava. Although this was once the residence of the Guanche "Mencey" (Chief) Bencomo and has been declared a cultural interest site, he says, "Currently the cave is in use as a goat pen and any content of archaeological interest is protected by a 40cm thick layer of packed goat excrement."

Agatha Christie and Tenerife

Fountain in Sitio Litre Till Krech from Berlin, Germany, CC BY 2.0

Anyone holidaying in Tenerife is in better company than maybe they imagined, since the world's best-known mystery writer and undisputed 'Queen of Crime', Agatha Christie, was herself a visitor to the island in 1927. While disillusioned with her husband's infidelity, Christie and her daughter, Rosalind, stayed at the Sitio Litre in Puerto de la Cruz, as guests of the Smith family.

Sitio Litre is the oldest garden in Tenerife, founded in the grounds of a mansion dating from 1730. The English merchant Archibald Little bought the house in 1774 and built The Orchid Garden that is now open to the public. The prominent writer was so inspired by the gardens that she based the plot of her collection of stories The Mysterious Mr. Quin in Puerto de la Cruz.

The Little family sold the house to Charles Smith in 1856 and the Smith family owned the house until the year 1996. The villa is still privately owned. Sitio Litre is famous for long gone garden parties held there with celebrities like William Wilde and his son Oscar Wilde, painter Marianne North and explorer and botanist Alexander Humboldt. Sitio Litre has a collection of 350 different types of orchids and an exhibition of several paintings on loan from the Royal Kew Gardens, with whom they collaborate on many occasions.

Another of Agatha Christie's works, "The Companion", is described as a short story about two English ladies who go on a holiday in Tenerife, but only one returns home alive. It is included in Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories. In actual fact, if you read the story (the complete text is online, in Spanish, as "La señorita de compañía"), you'll find that it takes place in Gran Canaria, not Tenerife. However, readers will recognize the typical English ladies of the time, "assisted by their Baedeker guides and blind to everything else." They visit the English library and the Anglican Church, wherever they travel!

Visitors to the grand old resort of Puerto de la Cruz would find neither of those "English essentials" lacking however. There is indeed an Anglican Church, as well as The English Library in the Parque de Taoro (next to a British School).

Tickling clouds to capture horizontal rain

Laurisilva Tenerife

According to an article at La Opinión, the Canary Islands are to patent a system to capture horizontal rain. Yes, you may smile, the term horizontal rain still amuses me too, but it was not until I lived with the phenomenon that I understood how accurate the name is. What we are really talking about is cloud that drops so low that the rain no longer needs to "fall" to reach the ground. It's already there.

Fog is often reported on the north of Tenerife, but again, this is seldom really fog, but clouds that have dropped to ground level. Indeed, such "fog" (really ground level cloud) played an important part in the events which led up to the collision between KLM and PanAm Boeing 747's at Los Rodeos airport in 1977.

These mists are also what make the laurisilva - laurel cloud or rain forests - what they are. They once covered almost the whole of Europe in the Tertiary period and small portions of which remain in the north of Tenerife and on La Gomera.

The water from these brumas (mists), could help to solve multiple problems of water shortages on the islands; from water to consume in homes in rural and isolated areas, for agriculture, for reforestation, or in fire prevention.

The idea is simple: water precipitates whenever it comes into contact with any object. Trees do this naturally, capturing and drawing the water into the ground. The system that translates this technologically has already been in use for eight years and has sparked interest in France and the Dominican Republic.

The Canary Island Government's vice councillor for the Environment, Milagros Luis Brito, calls the technology "tickling the clouds" and says that it is capturing up to 1,700 liters of water per day, is more ecological and uses few resources.

Tenerife Land of Eternal Christmas

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