A consultant billing a client in Amsterdam, a project contract with a company in Berlin, a connection steady enough for video calls: that is roughly the profile of digital nomad the Canary Islands government would like to see landing not just in Tenerife or Gran Canaria, but in El Hierro.
The plan is not new. In 2024, the regional minister for Tourism and Employment, Jéssica de León, told a parliamentary committee that the government would allocate 700,000 euros from the EU’s Next Generation funds to attract remote workers to the islands, with a specific goal: running “tactical content marketing actions” promoting inter-island mobility and the slower pace of life on the greener, more rural islands, rather than letting everyone cluster on the two largest ones.
AHI party deputy Raúl Acosta, speaking in that same debate, pressed on a point El Hierro has felt for decades: a digital nomad, he argued, generates added value comparable to “twenty or thirty conventional tourists,” precisely because of longer stays and higher spending. Figures cited at the time put the number of people classified as digital nomads across the islands at 86,000 in 2022, generating an estimated 167 million euros, with an average stay of around 28 days, nearly four times that of a typical week-long beach holiday.
For an island like El Hierro, which has struggled for decades to keep people from leaving, the argument is more political than touristic. The goal is not simply more arrivals, but turning temporary presence into a more stable population, even if it keeps rotating, with enough critical mass to keep shops, schools and clinics open.
One question, though, remains publicly unanswered with any precision: whether, and when, a new coworking or coliving hub will actually open on the smaller islands starting in September 2026, as had been circulating in recent months. Research for this article did not turn up a specific official announcement to that effect. What is confirmed is that the strategy of redistributing digital nomads toward the less populated islands remains active and funded, and that the Canary government keeps leaning on broadband, quality of life and a lower cost of living than other European cities as its selling points.
People familiar with the coworking scene in the islands describe a more modest picture than the institutional announcements suggest: few equipped spaces outside Tenerife and Gran Canaria, connections that do not always live up to the promises, and a digital nomad community in El Hierro or La Gomera that remains small. The difference, if there is one, is made by those who try anyway, drawn more by the silence and the landscape than by an office with an ocean view.
