Lanzarote is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands, approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa and 1,000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering 845.9 km2, it stands as the fourth largest of the islands. The first recorded name for the island, given by Angelino Dulcert, was Insula de Lanzarotus Marocelus, after the Genoese navigator Lancelotto Malocello, from which the modern name is derived. The island’s name in the native language was Titerro(y)gatra, which may mean “the red mountains”. As of 2010, a total of 139,000 people lived on Lanzarote which is an increase of 9.4% from 2006 (127,000). The seat of the island government (Cabildo Insular) is in the capital, Arrecife, which has a population of 59,000.
The island has its own international airport, Arrecife Airport, through which 5,438,178 passengers travelled in 2008. Tourism has been the mainstay of the island’s economy for the past forty years, the only other industry being agriculture.
Lanzarote is of volcanic origin. The island was created about 35 million years ago by the Canary hotspot. Alfred Wegener visited in 1912 and studied the island and showed how it fit in with his theory of continental drift. The island, along with others, was created after the breakup of the African and the American continental plates. The greatest recorded eruptions occurred between 1730 and 1736. The Lanzarote emblem is the devil because people had never seen a volcano erupt before so they thought it was the devil.
The island has a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve protected site status. According to a report in the Financial Times, this status was endangered by a local corruption scandal. Since May 2009, police have arrested the former president of Lanzarote, the former mayor of Arrecife and more than 20 politicians and businessmen in connection with illegal building permits along the Lanzarote’s coastline. UNESCO has threatened to revoke Lanzarote’s Biosphere Reserve status, “(i)f the developments are not respecting local needs and are impacting on the environment”.
