Tenerife

Tenerife is a major tourism destination offering winter sun holidays or Canary islands summer vacations for millions of tourists from Europe and across the world. It is famed for its climate as well as Tenerife’s beach resorts such as Playa de las Americas and Tenerife’s nightlife. It is also know for its lunar landscape scenery and Tenerife’s culture and festivals.

Tenerife is the most populated island of Spain and the Canary Islands situated in the in the Atlantic Ocean territorial waters belonging to the Canary Islands which in turn belongs to Spain followed by La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro the Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the largest city and the capital of the island and of the province and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is also the capital of the Canary Islands. The second most populated city and one third of the island in the Canaries is San Cristobal de La Laguna, a City with a World Heritage Site. The island also has the largest metropolitan area in the Canary Islands, with 360 km2.

Tenerife, with an area of 2000 square kilometres, is the largest island of the Canary Islands and a population of 900 000 inhabitants, is the most populated island of the Canary Islands and Spain.

There are various names that different cultures have given to Tenerife throughout history like the Guanches, the island received the name of Achinet or Chenet, although according to the literature consulted the names are often spelt differently.

The Romans referred to it as Nivaria from the Latin nix, nivis, snow, in clear reference to the snow on the Teide volcano. The sailors also referred to the Volcano Island in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries according to Le Verrier and Bontier as the Isle of Hell due to the number of times the Volcano was seen being active.

Teide is responsible for the current name of the island, as by the benehaoritas

Aborigines of La Palma from the root word Tene Mountain and FPR meaning white. Hispanicization resulted in an “r” joining the two words creating the name Tenerife.  “Tenerife” has a colloquial name “Chicharrero” which refers to the island only and its inhabitants of the capital Santa Cruz.

The adjective “chicharrero” comes from a derogatory term used by the inhabitants of the nearby town of La Laguna previously the capital of the island, to describe the inhabitants of the then poor and small fishing port. Poverty resulted in the inhabitants of Santa Cruz eating horse mackerel, a small fish and relatively cheap from which the term was derived.

With developments over time and the growth of Santa Cruz and the transfer of “The Capital” from La Laguna under the reign of Fernando VII in the XIX century the people assumed the derogatory name  as a badge of honour.

Tenerife is an island in large part very angular as the landscape was formed by successive volcanic eruptions throughout history and the most recent in history the Chinyero in 1909.
The island is located slightly north of the Tropic of Cancer, occupying a central position between Gran Canaria, La Gomera and La Palma, located just over 300 km off the African continent and about 1000 km from the Iberian Peninsula.

Triangular shaped, Tenerife is the largest island of the Canary Islands, with an area of 2000 square kilometres and the coastal length is 342 kilometres. In addition the highest point stands the Pico del Teide at 3718 meters and the highest point in all of Spain.

There are 200 islets with rocks around them, notably those of Anaga, Garachico, a total Fasnia of 200 000 square meters in area.