Anaga Rural Park

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Leisure · Subcategory: Green spaces

The Anaga Rural Park is an area of great landscape and environmental value with its own distinctive characteristics. Its physical boundaries cover the entire Anaga massif, which extends between the municipalities of Santa Cruz and La Laguna.

The park is the result of erosive forces acting on a volcanic territory formed during a period of intense eruptive activity that began about 6.5 million years ago. Its erosive dismantling has carved a dense network of ravines and exposed numerous dikes and volcanic plugs from ancient volcanic emissions.

Due to its altitude and orientation, Anaga benefits from the influence of the humid (trade) winds from the NE, which condition the existence of a humid and rainy environment in the high areas, in clear contrast to the arid zones with high sunshine on the coasts. This diversity of environments favours the settlement of vegetation in layers, with very differentiated plant communities.

Among its natural habitats are some of the best examples of Canary Islands ecosystems. Noteworthy for their good state of conservation are the laurel forests on its summits, the juniper groves, the cardonales, tabaibales and small pine enclaves, as well as freshwater communities. It also hosts numerous animal and plant species with more than 120 local endemics exclusive to this area, some of them very scarce and threatened.

Since the arrival of the first settlers in this area in the 16th century, terracing of the ravine slopes began in order to expand cultivation areas and prevent erosion of the most fertile lands. The effort invested by those farmers has reached us today as an important landscape and cultural heritage. Beyond the agricultural and livestock activities typical of a subsistence economy, an important economic activity was also established based on the export of sugar, wood and later wine, to the main European economic centres of that time.

In general, the Anaga area presents itself as an area of varied interest, being designated a protected natural area in 1987 with the status of Natural Park, later reclassified as Rural Park. On 9 June 2015 it was declared a Biosphere Reserve.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife has in this territory a natural and ethnographic jewel of incalculable value.

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