From 38,000 to 10,000 visits in a month: what Teide’s eco-tax did
Thirty-eight thousand, one hundred and eighty-eight people in one month. The next month, ten thousand, eight hundred and ninety-three. That drop tells the story better than any press release of what happened once an eco-tax took effect on 19 January 2026 on the two busiest routes in Teide National Park, trails PNT 10 Telesforo Bravo […]
Working with the Atlantic as your backdrop: inside Gran Canaria’s digital nomad hub
It’s eight in the morning on the ground floor of the Hotel Cristina by Tigotán, and the first tables are already filling up with laptops, coffee cups and headphones. Outside, just metres away, the waves of Las Canteras beach break on the sand. Inside, someone wraps up a video call with a client in Berlin […]
Fewer tourists, more money left behind: the Canary Islands’ new math
Fewer tourists, more euros. That’s the paradox laid out in black and white by ISTAC’s second-quarter 2026 data for the Canary Islands: visitors spent €4.851 billion across the archipelago between April and June, up 10.2% on the same period in 2025, with average daily spending climbing to €181 from €157.9 the year before. Tenerife and […]
The Canary Islands want Spain’s first offshore wind farm, and they want it off Gran Canaria
For centuries this sea filled sails. Now Canary Islands authorities want it to spin turbines. At the fifth Mesa de la Eólica Marina, convened by the regional government’s Ministry for Ecological Transition and Energy, island energy officials finalized the submission the archipelago will send to Spain’s Ministry for Ecological Transition ahead of the country’s first […]
Homes or Holiday Lets? The Canary Islands Try to Rewrite the Rules
In one building in Las Palmas, a family hangs laundry on the third-floor balcony while a wheeled suitcase rolls across the landing every three days on the fourth. That daily overlap is more or less what the new decree being drafted by the Canary Islands’ Tourism Ministry is trying to sort out. Tourism minister Jéssica […]
Before an astronaut sets foot back on the Moon, twenty robots will get there first
How many robots does it take to build a base on the Moon? Based on the update NASA released in early August on its Moon Base project, the planned outpost near the lunar South Pole, the answer sits somewhere north of twenty, and every one of them arrives before any astronaut sets foot back on […]
Las Palmas is about to become the world’s cruise capital, for two days at least
How much cruise traffic can an island absorb before something gives? On September 16 and 17, the Infecar fairground in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria fills with people who spend their working lives aboard cruise ships, or designing them, for the 2026 edition of Seatrade Cruise Med, one of the industry’s key global gatherings. Organizers […]
The Canary Islands quietly built a video game industry. Now it has numbers to show for it
Six years ago, people in the Canary Islands talked about two game development studios. Today there are 44, backed by 17 specialized training centers and more than 220 direct jobs tied to production. The figures land just ahead of International Video Game and Gamer Day, celebrated this Saturday, August 29, shifting the spotlight from the […]
UN study warns AI data centres could soon out-consume Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria combined
Nine hundred and forty-five terawatt-hours a year. That is the figure the United Nations University attributes to the data centres powering artificial intelligence by 2030, in a study published in early June by the Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) and reported by UN News. For scale: that is nearly triple the combined annual […]
El Hierro boosts desalinated water output by 15% while cutting energy costs by a third
Nine thousand residents, a climate that has delivered less and less rain in recent years, and an agricultural sector that depends almost entirely on water the island manufactures itself, because natural fresh water on El Hierro is scarce. Against that backdrop, on 3 August the Canary Islands’ Department of Territorial Policy, Territorial Cohesion and Water […]