On October 8, 1731, when Lanzarote had been living under the threat and consequences of the Timanfaya eruptions for more than a year, the Cathedral Chapter of the Canary Islands examined a piece of news that today allows us to view that period from a different perspective. While a large part of the island suffered the destruction of land, homes, and livelihoods, in Haría the number of residents increased, and with them, the sown lands. The tithe granary had become too small, and it was necessary to plan the construction of a new one, even considering the needs that the future growth of the municipality might generate.
The news seems simple, but it holds enormous historical weight: while the volcano was changing Lanzarote, Haría consolidated its capacity to maintain agricultural activity and face that transformation. The catastrophe was not experienced in the same way throughout the island. There were places devastated, families forced to abandon their lands, and communities that had to reorganize their lives, but also spaces that preserved their productive capacity and received the impetus of a growing population.
And that is where the connection with a landscape appears, which, although it could not yet be called the Valley of the Ten Thousand Palm Trees then, would end up becoming one of the most recognizable images of Haría.
The 1731 document does not speak of palm trees, and it is important to make that clear. It speaks of population, of sowings, of agricultural production, and of a granary that had become insufficient. But that activity allows us to understand the conditions that, during the subsequent decades and centuries, would favor the consolidation of a landscape marked by water, crops, fruit trees, and palm trees.
To understand the palm grove, one must start with water. On an island marked by scarcity, Haría had exceptional conditions that allowed for the development of more diverse agriculture and the maintenance of a much greener landscape than that of much of Lanzarote. A report from 1776 already mentioned its wells and the cultivation of vegetables, fig trees, palms, and other fruit trees, while later descriptions insisted on the abundance of water and springs in the valley.
The landscape was not, therefore, accidental. Palm trees coexisted with orchards, fruit trees, dwellings, and agricultural land, forming a system in which each element was related to the others. Water allowed cultivation, agriculture contributed to keeping the valley populated, and the palm tree found favorable conditions to grow. The palm grove of Haría cannot be understood solely as a concentration of trees, but as the result of a centuries-old relationship between the territory and its inhabitants.
That image also caught the attention of those who arrived from outside. At the beginning of the 19th century, the German naturalist Leopold von Buch described Haría and Máguez as a space of abundant vegetation, with a true luxury of palm trees and fig trees. Decades later, Sabino Berthelot again highlighted the contrast between the aridity of Lanzarote and the white houses surrounded by palm trees he found in the north of the island. Haría appeared to those travelers as a kind of oasis within a territory dominated by scarcity.
Over time, palm trees ceased to be merely part of the landscape to also become a resource. Their leaves and fibers were used to make brooms, mats, baskets, and various utensils linked to daily life. Pascual Madoz recorded in the mid-19th century the existence in Haría of an industry dedicated to the manufacture of palm mats and brooms. The palm tree was part of the domestic and artisanal economy, so preserving those trees had a reason that went far beyond aesthetics.
The economic importance even received official recognition. Between 1930 and 1950, landowners in Haría could request a subsidy from the State of two pesetas for each Canary Island palm tree cultivated. The data is revealing: those trees had recognized economic value and their conservation could be part of the agricultural exploitation itself. Planting a palm tree was not only a commitment to the landscape, but also a long-term investment, as it could provide raw material for generations.
But the palm grove also soon experienced its own decline. In the mid-19th century, Madoz recorded that there had formerly been many large palm trees in the valley and warned that in his time they had almost disappeared. Livestock and human action were among the causes of that loss. Concern for conservation, therefore, did not arise in recent decades: it is part of a much longer history.
For generations, Haría was known as the Valley of the Ten Thousand Palm Trees, a name that expressed much more than a number. There is no documentation to prove that there were ever exactly ten thousand specimens, so the figure must also be understood as part of the landscape's memory, a way of expressing the extraordinary abundance of palm trees that once characterized the valley.
Later counts allow us to understand that it was not an unfounded exaggeration either. In the 1970s, estimates close to 7,000 palm trees were reported in and around the valley, while in 2026 Hermelindo Navarro Cardero recalled participating, along with other young people, in a count that reached 9,864 specimens. This is not a scientific inventory nor does it allow for a definitive historical figure to be established, but it does constitute testimony to the dimension that this palm grove reached and the mark it left on the memory of those who traversed it.
Today the figures are different. Recent studies place the number of palm trees in the Haría nucleus at around 2,400 or 2,500, although comparisons must be made with caution because not all counts use the same territorial boundaries. The difference is not only numerical. The age of the specimens is also a concern, and above all, the regenerative capacity of the palm grove: a technical study placed the average height at 7.8 meters and warned of the difficulty in ensuring that new generations replace those that disappear.
To the problems derived from agricultural abandonment, water stress, and the loss of traditional uses, phytosanitary threats have been added. Among these, Diocalandra frumenti, popularly known as the palm weevil, stands out, which has necessitated the development of specific surveillance, treatment, and control programs. In 2024, the Government of the Canary Islands and the Cabildo of Lanzarote had registered 75,000 palm trees on the entire island and applied treatments to more than 2,000 specimens. Haría once again found itself within the areas where action was necessary to protect a plant heritage that was already suffering decades of decline.
But the history of the Valley of the Ten Thousand Palm Trees is also made of recovery attempts. In 1988, the La Tegala de Haría Cultural Association revived the Fiesta de la Bajada de la Palmera, and the following day, forty specimens were planted with the intention of contributing to the repopulation of the valley. The initiative is particularly significant because it demonstrates that, when there were still many more palm trees than today, the residents themselves already perceived that this landscape needed protection and recovery.
That is why October 8, 1731, offers an opportunity today to look at Haría from another perspective. On that day, while Timanfaya continued to transform Lanzarote, documentation recorded that in this valley the residents were increasing, the sowings were growing, and the infrastructure for collecting tithes was no longer sufficient. Three centuries later, that agricultural territory has become the historical basis of a landscape whose identity became linked to the palm trees.
The volcano changed the island, and Haría changed with it, but that valley continued to cultivate, grow, and slowly build a landscape that would eventually identify it to locals and visitors alike.
Perhaps that is why the ten thousand palm trees are something more than a figure that cannot be precisely verified. They are the memory of an abundance, of a relationship with water, and of a way of life that made Haría an exception within an island marked by aridity.
The Valley of the Ten Thousand Palm Trees may never have had exactly ten thousand. But for centuries, it had enough to become the green memory of a Lanzarote that the volcano could not erase.
Sources:
• Cabildo Cathedral of the Canary Islands. Minutes of October 8, 1731, reproduced in Unpublished Documents of the History of Lanzarote.
• José de León Hernández and Pedro C. Quintana Andrés, Population displacements and habitat restructuring in Lanzarote between 1730-1736.
• Pedro C. Quintana Andrés, Volcanic catastrophes and the transformation of the agricultural landscape in the Canary Islands during the Modern Age: Lanzarote 1730-1750.
• Government of the Canary Islands, Haría, cradle of Lanzarote's craftsmanship.
• Government of the Canary Islands, Haría. Geographical, historical, and artistic synthesis.
• Pascual Madoz, Geographical-statistical-historical Dictionary of Spain and its Overseas Possessions. • Gregorio Barreto Viñoly, The palm trees of the Haría Valley, The Haría Municipality Newsletter. • Haría City Council.
• Government of the Canary Islands and Cabildo of Lanzarote, documentation and inventories on the island's palm trees.
• Biodiversity Service, Palm Tree Inventory.
• La Voz de Lanzarote, information on the proclamation of the San Juan de Haría festivities of 2026.
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