Hola

That very average run of weather finally broke last weekend. We had some truly glorious weather, and this week started with light winds, blue skies and high temperatures. And then it all went horribly wrong again! This time Storm Nuria was to blame. It went unusually cold here on Wednesday, and Thursday brought 80KMH winds, which fortunately didn’t affect us, but they brought trees down, took a roof off a house in Tahiche, blew down a lighting tower and generally caused mayhem. Things seem settled this morning, so hopefully there are no more storms lurking out in The Atlantic.

I always feel guilty when we have poor weather for our visitors, but I’ve spoken to a few this week, and they seem undaunted. In fact, there’s a nice, chilled feeling around the island at the moment.

Do you remember the furore last year when CACT increased prices of the major attractions, like Timanfaya and Mirador del Rio, by an average of 60%? Many people, including the vociferous hotel lobby, Asolan, predicted disaster. Well the numbers are now in, and in one sense, they were right. The number of visitors to the centres fell by 14.8%. But, the income increased by 12 million €!

I’ve been thinking about this all week. Could this template be applied to the island as a whole? Could we pull off the trick of decreasing our visitor numbers by 15%, which would take us back under 3 million, but still take the same amount of money? It’s an interesting concept, and I think it boils down to the difference between “cheap” and “value for money.” I walked past two bars in Puerto del Carmen this week. The first had an A Board outside advertising large beers at 2 €, and less than 50 metres down the road, there was one offering the same for 1 €. I suspect the 1 € bar has many more customers during the day, but I’d place a small wager on the 2 € bar going home with more profit, and looking at each bears that out. The 2 € bar just looked much nicer, enticing and worth a visit. Even their A Board was printed and professional, where the other bar had a poorly written chalk board, mis matched furniture and was generally run down looking.

The photo at the top is of the wind toy on Arrieta roundabout in 70 kmh winds this week!


What we’ve been doing

We took the photo above on Arrieta beach this morning – blue sky day after the storm!

We had dinner at SeBe in Costa Teguise last Friday night. We hadn’t been there since they opened in 2020, and I had been longing to enjoy one of their amazing rice dishes again. The menu is smaller than it was, and the prices are quite a bit higher, but my goodness, the food and service were amazing. I can see why the place is pretty much booked out every night. The four of us shared their Iberian Pork paella, and it was truly excellent, with the best socarrat ever!

We had a new fridge arriving this week, so we spent some time at the weekend taking out our old integrated fridge (much easier than I expected) and cleaning underneath the cupboards it lives in, (much harder than I expected!) We’d ordered our new one from FT in Tias. They are such a good company to deal with – great service and advice in store, free delivery and they take the old appliance too, without charging any extra. Above all, their staff are all so friendly – they must love working there.

The new one arrived bang on time, and the guys did a great job installing it and taking the old one away with them. We’ve had a pretty large Gecko living behind the old fridge for a couple of years, and he wasn’t impressed when his home was removed. I haven’t seen him since, but I hope he’s found somewhere to his liking – he’s been doing a great job of eating any insects that find their way into the house.

We were supposed to be doing a guided trek in El Golfo this week, but it was called off due to the high winds, after The Cabidlo banned outdoor activities. In our case, it turned out to be a good decision, as I wouldn’t have liked to have been out in Thursday’s wind. But it did make me feel sorry for the tour guides and excursion companies. When we have weather events like these, they lose their day’s revenue, and they can never get it back.


In the news

I was surprised to learn that Bodega Los Bermejos sells about 20% of its production to the United States. Trump’s tariffs are obviously going to impact them, but they will be fine this year, as the harvest was low, so they can probably sell all their production locally. But it will be a shame that the Americans, who clearly enjoy Lanzarote wine, may not be able to buy it going forward.

The Canaries as a whole export about 33 Million € worth of goods to the states, so it won’t have a major economic impact here, but Spain exports over 20 billion €, mostly nuclear reactors, machinery and electronics, with pharmaceutical products and oils close behind.

I was pleased to see the geothermal electricity generators at Timanfaya have proved to be a success. I remember when they were announced, and everyone was worried they would be hideous things that would ruin the area. But the reality is, the three generators are about the size of a small bush, and they don’t impact the landscape at all. The people responsible have patented the design, and there’s talk about moving into large scale production to sell them to other countries that have high temperatures close to the surface.

There was a presentation this week at Secrets Hotel in Puerto Calero, where The President and other representatives gave us details of a new tourism promotion strategy aimed at attracting visitors from the east coast of the United States, specifically from New York. I can hear the questions already: “Why tout for more business when we have too much tourism?” The answer is we have too many eggs in one basket currently, with around half our tourism coming from one market – the UK. Of all the Spanish resorts, we have the highest percentage of any, from one country. It’s a threat, and I believe it’s important for Lanzarote to diversify. If Lanzarote becomes unfashionable to our UK visitors, as happened years ago with the German market, we could be in trouble. That’s the team doing the presentation in the image above.

After complaining in this newsletter a few months ago that our politicians need to stop talking in vague terms and start giving us a concrete roadmap for the island, I was pleased to see Oswaldo Betancort this week came up with a properly detailed plan for improving the water situation. It’s going to cost around 20 million €, but he was very specific about new osmosis membranes for two plants, a complete refurbishment for the one that broke down a couple of years ago, and the creation of a new section for the main plant in Arrecife. We should see a 10% increase in supplies at some point this year, with much more to follow in 2026.

Yet another video has gone viral on social media this week, showing a big group of cyclists moving the road blocks at Los Hervideros, and cycling off on the closed road to El Golfo. I always find the comments, from local Canarians, make for interesting reading. A lot of them were talking about the lack of respect that some people have for Lanzarote, and a sense of entitlement that “rules don’t apply to us.”

It’s been confirmed that 45 new agents will be taken on for the immigration desks at the airport doubling the number. It’s good news, and not before time.


That’s it for this week. We’ll be working hard over the weekend to get ahead of everything, as we’re off on our travels again next week. We have a night in Madrid before we fly to San Juan in Puerto Rico for a few days, and then we head out on a Virgin Cruise from there to Barcelona. It’s a working trip for me, as I’m the destination expert aboard, so I’ll be giving talks to the passengers about each of the ports we’re visiting – Tenerife, Casablanca, Mallorca, Valencia and Barcelona. It’s interesting that we’ll be sailing directly from Puerto Rico to Tenerife, because Puerto Rico, like so many Caribbean islands, was largely populated by people from The Canaries in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

Have a wonderful weekend wherever you are!

Un saludo

Miguel

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