El Hierro: How the youngest Canary Island escaped mass tourism

El Hierro: How the youngest Canary Island escaped mass tourism Getty Images El Hierro is located around 500km off the west coast of Africa While protests against mass tourism rage on neighbouring islands, El Hierro – the wildest and most westerly of the Canary Islands – has quietly chosen to do things very differently. El Hierro Tourist Board In El Sabinar, gnarled wild juniper trees have been blown into surreal shapes by fierce trade winds The island's history is plagued by devastating droughts that led to mass emigration as far afield as Venezuela, most recently in the mid-20th Century, and this route signposts everything water-related from Los Dornajos to dams and divine intervention. Inaugurated in June 2014 with five 60m-tall wind turbines, two water reservoirs, four hydraulic turbines and one pumping station, it takes advantage of the island's unique topography – combining intermittent wind power with water power to create a constant supply of electricity – to fulfil the island's long-held dream of meeting all its energy needs from renewables. El Hierro Tourist Board The island’s dramatic topography includes sheer cliffs, arid volcanic cones and evergreen forests Cristina Morales, Gorona del Viento's head of communications, explained how it works: "Surplus wind power pumps desalinated water from a coastal reservoir to the upper reservoir set in a natural volcanic crater 700m above sea level," she said.