This week of shared reflections on the issues that require more attention to have a better quality of life for the people who inhabit this island, I would like to bring up the topic of Timanfaya.
How are we managing Timanfaya and its surroundings? I have heard these days with the presentation of the La Geria Plan that it is an area that must be taken care of because it is the fifth most important landscape in the world, so what position does Timanfaya occupy within the list of important landscapes in the world? Well, it is a National Park, a detail that I think we all forget and believe it is a CACT. That is why they are not in a hurry to remove the car queues from Timanfaya and enable the shuttles from the neighboring towns to better protect the entire area and significantly improve the tourist experience.
I have read the results of the opinion surveys of visitors to the Tourist Centers, and to my surprise I discovered that of the 100,000 visitors (in 2023 Timanfaya had 921,343 visitors) that Timanfaya has in August, 80% leave unhappy for what we all know, endless queues in the heat of Lanzarote. So what are we achieving? What experience do tourists take away? The focus is really being placed on the center's turnover and not on the recommendations of the National Park Board itself to remove the cars from the Islote del Hilario parking lot and eliminate the queues at the entrance toll, and neither is the customer satisfaction, the reputation of the CACT, the National Park, or the Lanzarote Destination being placed at the center of the management.
Another important issue to take into account is the quality of the visit in the summer season with this new climatology of constant heat waves and haze. I believe that it is time to start studying the possibility of closing Timanfaya to visits during the hottest hours of the day, to allow the staff to rest, both in the kitchen and restaurant, and especially outside, from the experiments with the heat. I propose that between the months of May to November it be opened to the public earlier, from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., and again in the afternoon the excursion with food included be done to see the sunset that is already offered to the British market with great success. This proposal is designed to adapt the visit to the hours that will be best enjoyed, taking into account the high temperatures that accompany us more and more frequently. We must think that our visitors come from colder countries and for them enduring the summer heat in Timanfaya is less pleasant.
New road infrastructure projects also threaten the beauty of the entire Timanfaya environment, such as the doubling of the Yaiza to Playa Blanca road, and thus little by little the charm of Lanzarote is fading away.
This week is the ideal week to talk about these issues, the protection of the territory and the landscape, the better management of tourist flows, the management of protected natural spaces, climate change and the effects of heat waves and haze and how to adapt to them on this island.
Micaela Ferrer
Citizen of Lanzarote
