The Spanish island that loves tourists (especially Britons)

As anti-tourism demonstrations spread like wildfire across Spain last year, the emergence of a counterprotest movement on Lanzarote was wonderfully refreshing. Digging deeper, it was no surprise. Lanzarote, an island I’ve visited many times over the years, has always skilfully steered away from the worst excesses of mass tourism.

When I returned this month, in 20C winter warmth, one of the driving forces behind the “Lanzarote Loves Tourism” campaign, restaurateur Augusto Ferreira, assured me that visitors are welcome: “Tourism has been and will be our main sector, the one that has helped us grow and enjoy a better life and that, just like our island, we must protect.”

Lanzarote Loves Tourism has mushroomed into an organisation that has already attended the World Travel Market trade fair in London, with an Instagram account and plans for more events this year.

The choice of London was no accident as a third of the 18 million visitors to the Canary Islands last year hailed from the UK. Indeed, Lanzarote has long enjoyed a love affair with Britain, since the 1960s and 1970s when jet travel opened up the island.

I found the embodiment of the marriage with Britain at Finca Arrieta in the quiet north. Lanzarote-born Joshua Braddock’s British parents moved here almost four decades ago. “Lanzarote has always done things differently,” he smiled, as he showed me to my spacious yurt spread among low-impact luxury villas, stylish communal areas and a solar-heated pool in the eco resort his pioneering parents fashioned. “You can trace that back to one man: Cesar Manrique.”

“Manrique was not just a celebrated artist rubbing shoulders with Picasso, Pollock and Warhol, but a visionary who acutely felt the threat of unbridled mass tourism development as early as the late 1960s when the island’s first hotel opened,” explained Joshua, whose own passionately curated resort echoes Manrique’s style.

Manrique had the ear of politicians and remarkably persuaded them to keep development low-rise, disperse tourism around the island, use local materials like lava rock, not to over develop the coast and to preserve the traditional palette of striking white buildings. His central tenet was working with nature rather than fighting it: “The best painting is nature,” Manrique famously declared.

That isn’t to say Lanzarote doesn’t feel tourism pressures – including issues with housing stock, visiting cruise ships and a scarcity of resources – but it also doesn’t have skyscrapers, bar one in the capital Arrecife that remains controversial. Manrique and his continuing influence, beyond his death in 1992, still mitigate in a way only now filtering through to the massively developed south of Gran Canaria and Tenerife.

Manrique fashioned a glorious smorgasbord of projects that are a joy to visit, from reimagined forts and cacti gardens, through to his foundation, metal roundabout sculptures, and the island’s finest viewpoint, the Mirador del Río. Most spectacular of all is the Jameos del Agua. This surreal volcanic cave complex shimmers with swimming pools, an auditorium and lounge areas: tasteful, refined, the antithesis of gaudy resort nightclubs.

Accredited tourist guide Claudia Hernandez swept me around Manrique’s last home and studio in the sleepy palm-fringed northern village of Haria. “Manrique set a path that Lanzarote continues to follow. You can link pro-tourism things like ‘Lanzarote Loves Tourism’ into that,” said Claudia after we watched a film passionately espousing Manrique’s view of how Lanzarote should be developed.

Tellingly, some of last year’s anti-tourist placards screamed “Macrotourism destroys Canary Islands”, recognising Manrique’s view not all tourism is the same. Yes, Lanzarote has larger hotels confined to resorts like Playa Blanca and Puerto del Carmen, but tourism softens as it spreads into the hinterland; much of it small-scale and family-run with decisions taken locally. Profits are banked and reinvested locally too.

Canarian Sandra Rodriquez of Lava Trekking epitomises this movement. We eschewed the packed buses that ferry cruise ship passengers off for a shoehorned experience in the Timanfaya National Park. Instead, just next door, she immersed us in epic volcanic scenery in the Parque Natural de los Volcanes. “I like to keep my group sizes very intimate, down below ten guests,” she told me as we ended the hike, eight strangers becoming friends over a picnic rug alive with the local goat’s cheese, figs and wine.

WeWhale also chimed with the low-impact Lanzarote ethos. Forget packed replica pirate ships drowning in booze: they take a maximum of 12 guests on Europe’s first emission-free 100 per cent electric whale-watching boat. Skipper Gonzalo Apesteguia said: “Lanzarote is a perfect fit for us as the type of tourist it tries to attract is open to a more educational experience on a small boat. We are glad to be part of that positive tourism, where both man and our mammal friends are protected.”

Sharing Puerto Calero’s marina is Catlanza. This more conventional boat operator does offer booze, but also yoga, a vegetarian lunch and chilled lounge music. During Covid, when it had to take fewer passengers, it found that guests were happy to pay more to have a less crowded and more rewarding experience. Lanzarote in a nutshell.

A strong British influence ripples through Lanzarote tourism today, with Ollie Horton the shining light behind Wine Tours Lanzarote. Its small-group tours really get under the skin of the unique volcanic viniculture, opening up smaller producers alongside the big names. He’s also innovating, adding craft beer options and this year the first tours into the emerging northern Ye-Lajares region.

I met Joshua Braddock again at another of the lovingly idiosyncratic properties his family has crafted as an antidote to big hotels, with its expanded Lanzarote Retreats network. The Eco Fisherman’s Cottage is a couple’s retreat peering out to the cobalt Atlantic in soporifically relaxed Arrieta, a Manrique-pleasing low-rise village.

We checked out the brand new, Lanzarote produce-filled Azotea restaurant with as many islanders as tourists. “Places like this and the jobs and income it creates are only possible due to tourism,” said Joshua. “Most people on the island understand that tourism is a symbiotic relationship.”

Amidst a febrile political environment in Spain, with talk of dramatic clampdowns on short-term rentals, restricted property ownership and tourist taxes, Lanzarote shows there can be another way with a lower impact, locally-led tourism. Raising a glass of bone-dry – and thoroughly unique – Lanzarote Malvasia Volcanica in toast Joshua beamed: “There will always be naysayers anywhere, but Lanzarote remains an island where everyone is very much welcome. Lanzarote really does love tourism and the love affair with Britain continues.”

How to do it

EasyJet flies to Lanzarote from a number of UK airports. For accommodation, see Lanzarote Retreats. For more information, visit turismolanzarote.