In September 1730, the earth opened in two and the magma that gushed from its interior formed the Volcán del Cuervo (or Caldera de Los Cuervos). From that eruption, which is estimated to have lasted for six years, many other volcanoes emerged from the interior of the Earth and changed the landscape of Lanzarote forever.
"We have the recent experience of the eruption of La Palma and what it meant for the population of La Palma, an eruption that lasted 85 days and that, rightly, we consider catastrophic, let's imagine how the inhabitants of Lanzarote felt in 1730," begins the former director of the Volcanological Station of the Canary Islands Juan Carlos Carracedo during an interview with La Voz. The Timanfaya eruption is "the longest lasting eruption and the one that covered the most territory in the Canary Islands, it is a practically world record".
During the six years it lasted, "the amount of gases it emitted produced a small planetary winter," says the volcanologist and doctor in Geological Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid, on the occasion of his visit to Lanzarote as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Timanfaya National Park. This winter could be measured in the growth rings of cedars in California.
A scientific investigation in which Juan Carlos Carrecedo participated in 1980 shed light on the beginning of the Timanfaya eruption. "The beginning is clearly indicated by the diary of the priest of Yaiza, which indicates how a large piece of a volcano broke off and formed a large stone that diverted the lavas that were going north and then went to the northeast," explains Carracedo. Then, a new eruptive vent came out from the sea. "Reports from the time said that fish that were not known were coming out" and there "the volcano of Juan Perdomo" was formed.
The different eruptions that sprang from the interior of the earth did so in a fissure that opened between the Caldera de Los Cuervos to the volcano of Juan Perdomo, near El Golfo. There "an enormous amount of volcanic cones were produced. That is why the island is called the island of a thousand volcanoes, although it does not have a thousand, but it has many," he says during the interview.
During the Timanfaya eruption, the population of Lanzarote had to create a plan for total evacuation of the island to emigrate to Fuerteventura. Most of the "small towns known as Timanfaya, Santa Catalina or Los Rodeos disappeared buried in the lava", highlights the former director of the Volcanological Station of the Canary Islands and throughout the eruption there was concern that the lava would reach the town of Yaiza, where there was a larger population.
"They even made a count of the ships they would need for the evacuation," highlights the volcanologist Carracedo. Thus, he adds that "in the end almost everyone left and the few who remained did so at the request of the Crown to defend the island from pirate attacks of the time," he continues. "All the inhabitants had to leave. It did not destroy Yaiza, but it did destroy the entire cultivation area, therefore there were no means of subsistence," explains the professor of Geology.
Lanzarote, then covered in sand, went from being a cereal island, the main distributor of grain in the Canary Islands, to losing its fields of crops and having to emigrate to its neighboring island. However, its new landscape after the eruption was a before and after for the people of Lanzarote, the island was tinged with a blanket of volcanic ash.
"They thought that they would not be able to return to Lanzarote because there was no place to cultivate and that was not going to allow people to subsist," adds Carracedo. However, "after the eruption, they realized that in the area where the picón or rofe was very thick, all the plants died, but in the areas where there were a few centimeters of ash, the plants not only did not die, but grew more vigorously," explains the also researcher of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and researcher at the University of Las Palmas (ULPGC).
The Timanfaya eruption brought with it the current landscape of Lanzarote, but also the invention of a crop that "today is spread all over the world": the enarenado. "The picón is hygroscopic, it attracts moisture from the atmosphere of the trade winds. It allowed that after the eruption not only pineapples, but also potatoes, vegetables and all kinds of vegetables were cultivated," he highlights.
At present, the impact of climate change and its impact on the scarcity of rainfall and the warming of the planet makes it more than necessary to adapt cultivation methods. "Cultivation in the sand can be one of the agricultural procedures that allows cultivation in areas that may be in danger due to this increase in temperatures," says the volcanologist.
"We live on active volcanic islands and we can eventually expect a volcanic eruption. We have to learn first to monitor it so that we can save what is important, which is the lives of people, something that the inhabitants of Lanzarote in 1730 did very well, where there was not a single human victim and a posteriori know how to take advantage of the resources that the new evolution provides to improve the quality of life of the population," advises the expert in Volcanology.
How the Timanfaya eruption was experienced was collected in 37 reports that the local authorities of Lanzarote sent to the Audiencia de Gran Canaria and from there to Madrid to transfer it to the Crown. Added to this is the Archive of Simancas, found in 1989 and one of the most important in Europe, which was fundamental to be able to "reconstruct with considerable precision" the development of the eruption and the damage it generated on the island.
However, until now experts still have doubts in the reconstruction of the eruptive history of Timanfaya, an eruption that "goes beyond all the parameters of the historical eruptions of the Canary Islands due to its duration". Carracedo has pointed out that "we are not sure that it will last six years" and that between 1730 and 1736 "there may have been long periods without eruptions, instead of an eruption from 1730 to 36 continuous".
Currently, the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria maintains a collaboration with the University of California and the Timanfaya National Park to study the geology of the eruption.
Predicting volcanic eruptions
Regarding the possibility of predicting, through science, future volcanic eruptions, Carracedo is blunt: "Science cannot predict it. Volcanic eruptions are like women's pregnancies, once a woman is pregnant, the doctor can quite accurately say when the delivery will be, even if it is going to be a boy or a girl, but what a doctor will never be able to do is say that a woman is going to have a child in five years," he adds.
Technology has allowed volcanic eruptions to be followed in real time and to take appropriate prevention measures, but "what a scientist cannot say and whoever tells you is a charlatan is that within two or three years there will be an eruption in such a place". The volcanologist explains that for that "it would be necessary to base it on statistics and that statistics are valid when the phenomena are very frequent", while the eruptions in the Canary Islands "in the historical period have been very few, 10 or 12".
However, this expert highlights that what scientists can do is say "following the universal norm of geology that what is going to happen in the future is the same as what has happened in the past" and thus "determine the areas where a future eruption is foreseeable without saying when, but saying where there is a greater probability of it touching".
To conclude, Carracedo points out that "if the earth cools down it will become just another one of the dead planetary bodies, which no longer have earthquakes or volcanoes or life or atmosphere or anything". Therefore, "we can be very happy that the Earth is a living planet".
