Teide National Park

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The Teide National Park is a Spanish protected natural area located on the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands. It was declared on January 22, 1954 as a national park. It is the largest and oldest of the national parks in the Canary Islands and the third oldest in Spain. In 2007 it was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco and, also since that year, one of the 12 Treasures of Spain.

In this area is the Teide volcano (in Guanche and originally, Echeyde or Echeide) which, with its 3715 meters, is the highest peak in Canary Islands, Spain and any land emerged from the Atlantic Ocean. It is also the third largest volcano in the world from its base on the ocean floor, surpassed only by Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii. The height of Teide also makes the island of Tenerife the tenth highest island in the world. Next to Teide is the second highest mountain in the Canary Islands, Pico Viejo, with 3,135 meters above sea level, both of which are the only Canary mountains that exceed 3,000 meters in altitude.

The Teide National Park, was in 2008 the most visited national park of the four that the Canary Islands have with a total of 2.8 million visitors, according to data from the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics (ISTAC) being It is also the most visited national park in Spain with &&&&&&&&04079823.&&&&&04,079,823 visitors in 2016. It is also the most visited national park in Europe and currently the ninth in the world.

History

The Plain of Ucanca and the Teide at the bottom.

Teide National Park in 3D.

The Teide National Park has extensive historical value. This place, apart from having an important spiritual meaning for the Guanches, came to be a fundamental resource for the sustenance and survival of these settlers at certain times of the year, since in the summer periods there was a large concentration of cattle and grazing in this zone. The archaeological sites that have been discovered are important in the park. The Guanches knew Mount Teide as "Echeyde" whose meaning was "home of Guayota, the Evil One". According to legend, Guayota kidnapped the god of the Sun, Magec for the Guanches, and locked him inside the volcano, plunging the island into total darkness. At that moment, the Guanches invoked Achamán, their supreme sky god, and begged for his help. Achamán managed to defeat Guayota and, in this way, ended the captivity of the Sun and sealed the mouth of Echeyde with Guayota inside it. This story seems to coincide with the last great eruptive episode of Teide. In the year 1492, just when Christopher Columbus left the Colombian island ready to conquer the new world, the Boca Cangrejo volcano, near Mount Teide, was erupting. In 1798, the last major eruption produced, constituted the so-called Nose of Teide in which 12 million cubic meters of lava were poured over three months from Pico Viejo.

In 1981 the park was reclassified and a special legal regime was established. In 1989, the Council of Europe awarded the national park the European Diploma, in its highest category. This recognition of management and conservation has been subsequently renewed in 1994, 1999 and 2004. In December 1999, the Spanish government expanded the surface of the park by incorporating certain adjoining land, in an area of 5419 hectares, leading it to its current area of 18,900 hectares. As a celebration of the 50th anniversary of its transformation into a national park, in 2002 the procedures began for UNESCO to name it a World Heritage Site. On June 28, 2007, after five years of work and effort, Unesco decided to declare the Teide National Park a World Heritage Site at its UNESCO World Heritage Convention held in Christchurch, New Zealand. The Teide National Park is also, since the end of 2007, one of the 12 Treasures of Spain.

The Izaña Atmospheric Observatory was the place where there were more hours of sunshine in 2007 in Spain, with 3,845, and it was also the place where the lowest average temperature was recorded, an average of 10.2 degrees throughout the year (according to the data available to the National Institute of Statistics, collected in its statistical yearbook). After different revisions and extensions, its surface is 18,990 hectares.

General considerations

White Mountain, at the bottom of the Fortress and the Head.

Geomorphologically, it is made up of two large depressions crowned by Mount Teide at an altitude of 3,715 m. Numerous lava flows from different eruptions next to the mountains and volcanoes spread throughout the park form a characteristic landscape. The Alto de Guajara, the Llano Ucanca, the Siete Cañadas, La Fortaleza, the Roques de García and Pico Viejo (or Chahorra) are very important and characteristic examples that form the natural landscape of the park.

The flora has also been studied by scientists such as Alexander von Humboldt and Eric R. Sventenius. It is home to insular, regional and local endemism, and has 11 habitats of community interest, which occupy 75% of its surface. In addition, it is worth emphasizing the importance, in terms of number and exclusivity, of its invertebrate fauna.

It is the national park in Spain that receives the most visitors per year and has in the lodging section the Las Cañadas del Teide inn. According to the data corresponding to the year 2004, with 3.5 million visits per year, it is the volcanic area that receives the most visits in the world, only surpassed by Mount Fuji, in Japan.

The Teide National Park is complementary to the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, this is mainly due to the fact that each of them represents the structures and volcanic forms of the less evolved magmas of this type of islands (Hawaii) and the most evolved and differentiated (Teide). On the other hand, landscape-wise the Teide National Park shares similar characteristics with the Grand Canyon National Park of Colorado (Arizona, United States).

Biodiversity

Main articles: Flora de Canarias and Fauna de Canarias.

Lagarto tizón Gallotia rooti.

In the Teide National Park there are a total of 194 higher plants. Of these, 58 are considered endemic Canarian plants. At present, according to the National Catalog of Threatened Species, three plant species are in danger of extinction and another twelve in a vulnerable situation. For many endemism, the walls and cavities that the stones of Las Cañadas make up, represent a true refuge for their conservation. For example, the red tajinaste (Echium wildpretii), the Las Cañadas rockrose (Cistus osbeckifolius), the Guanche rose (), in serious situation because its population does not exceed 50 specimens, the Teide wallflower (Erysimum scoparium), the pajonera grass (Descurainia bourgaeana), the Teide broom (Cytisus supranubius) and the rare Helianthemum juliae. Above 2400 m above sea level, a very fragile and delicate plant grows, the Teide violet (Viola cheiranthyfolia). This is not only one of the few plants that inhabits the high mountains, but it is also within the enormous group of plants that flourishes at the highest altitude in the entire national territory.

In order to respond to the many threats to which this flora is subjected (human influence, introduced species), different plans have been approved that seek to shed light on the future of this sensitive ecosystem. These plans try to coordinate the development of the different activities that can be carried out to try to recover the populations of these species: massive nursery seedlings, seed collection, analysis of the structure, restorations, laboratory germination experiences, dynamics and population's genetics.

Within the fauna section, the species that inhabit the national park temporarily or permanently throughout the year are the hoopoe, the gray shrike, the road pipit, the long-eared owl, the canary, the common kestrel, rabbits, crows, the black-headed warbler and the gypsy warbler, hawks, the blue tit, the black lizard, the wagtail, blackbirds, warblers, the canary-eared bat, the rock dove, the partridge, the Delande's perenquen, the robin, the blue chaffinch, mice, turtle doves, the unicolor swift, the mouflon, the Moorish hedgehog, the Teide pimelia and the feral cat.

Place of scientific interest

Red cushions.

The similarity between the environmental and geological conditions of the Teide National Park and those of the planet Mars have turned this volcanic enclave into a point of reference for studies related to the red planet.

The existing analogies between the red planet and some areas of Tenerife make the island the ideal place for testing the instruments that will travel to Mars and that would reveal past or present life on that planet. In 2010, a research team tested in Las Cañadas del Teide, the Raman instrument that will be sent on the next expedition to the red planet, ESA-NASA Exomars, from 2016-2018.

In 2011, a team of researchers from the United Kingdom visited the national park in June to test a method for the search for life on Mars and to find places to test, in 2012, new robotic vehicles.

Acknowledgments and certifications

Principle of the national park.

Throughout its history, the Teide National Park has received different distinctions, among the most important ones awarded recently are:

1989: Diploma from the Council of Europe to Conservation. Renovated in 1994, 1999 and 2004.

1995: Prize for Environment, modality Institutions, awarded by the Cabildo Insular de Tenerife.

1996: Condecorating the Tourism Merit of the Ministry of Commerce and Tourism.

1999: A Friendly Prize for Tourism and Convivencia Ciudadana, awarded by the Centro de Initiatives y Turismo de Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

2005: ISO 14001 Environmental Certification.

2006: Community Environmental Management and Audit System (EMAS).

2007: World Heritage and Red Natura 2000.

Twinnings

The Teide National Park is twinned and has collaboration agreements with:

Rapa Nui National Park (Easter Island, Republic of Chile): since 2001.

In addition, Teide National Park participates in different international advisory and exchange programs with other national parks in the world (especially Central and South America, and through the EUROPARC-Spain Federation with other national parks in Europe). As far as international cooperation is concerned, the Teide National Park has provided its technical support to the Souss-Massa National Park located in the southwest of Morocco.

In popular culture

The parador of Las Cañadas in 1972.

In 1966, the film "One Million Years B.C." was filmed in the Teide National Park and starred in the famous actress Raquel Welch.

Mike Oldfield included in his compilation The Complete fel 1985, the song Mount Teide dedicated to this famous tinerfeño volcano.

The Teide National Park also shot most of the scenes of the Furia de titanes (2010) and Wrath of the Titans (2012).

The English musician Brian May studied different astronomical phenomena from Izaña in the Teide Cañadas, even wrote the song "Tie Your Mother Down"in this national park.

The Teide was chosen as the second most impressive volcano in Europe, after Etna, by the users of the web portal "TripAdvisor", which has made a list with the ten European volcanoes most shocking for its beauty and destructive power.

On December 8, 2008, following an initiative of the main Jewish community in the Canary Islands (based in Tenerife) the flag of Israel was placed on the ground for a few minutes at the foot of the Teide. This act was welcomed with joy by the Israeli Jews.

The Teide National Park was during 2010 the most visited national park in Europe and the second most visited national park in the world.

Next to the Parador de Turismo de Las Cañadas is a small chapel dedicated to the Virgin of the Snows which is the Christian temple at the highest altitude of Spain.

The video clip of the song 'The Island - Pt. 1 Dawn' of the Australian group Pendulum was recorded entirely in the national park and published on September 2, 2010, where you can distinguish at the beginning of the video the silhouette of the Teide volcano and the landscapes characteristic of the national park throughout the filming

Tenerife was the place where L. Ron Hubbard (founder of the Church of Science) collected the so-called "OT-III materials"according to this doctrine one of the volcanoes where the "thetans" 75 million years ago is the Teide, together with other volcanoes in the world, mainly from Hawaii.

On June 24, 1989 the radio program Espacio en Blanco de la Radiocadena Española (the current Radio 5) and currently in M80 Radio, called a "OVNI High" in the national park of Teide in order to achieve some kind of contact with aliens. Nearly forty thousand people came to this event.

On 8 January 1998, members of a sect led by a German psychologist named Heide Fitkau Garthe were arrested, who was suspected of attempting, together with members of his sect, to perform a ritual suicide in the Teide.

Canary composer Benito Cabrera inspired the landscape of Teide for the famous Nube de Hielo song.

The sixth delivery of the saga Quick and Furious (The Fast and the Furious), starred by Vin Diesel, and directed by Justin Lin, he had the Teide as the main stage of most of his outdoor plans.

In 2017, the Teide National Park was the eighth most wanted place on the platform Google Street View with a total of 8.6 million visits, being at a level similar to places such as Taj Mahal, Mont Blanc, Guiza Necropolis, Angkor Wat or Stonehenge.

In 2018, the surroundings of the national park took part in the shooting of the American film Rambo V: Last Blood, starring Sylvester Stallone and Paz Vega among others.