The hardened black lava seems to stretch forever down the slopes of the Tajogaite volcano.
Locals call it “malpais,” or badlands, and it’s hard to imagine anything ever lived on this alien-like landscape that covers much of western La Palma, one of the Canary Islands.
And yet, three years ago, this area had forests all over, and farms and gardens and houses. There were small towns, too – Todoque, Camino Pampillo, Los Campitos, El Paraiso – where families had lived for generations.
Benedicto Brito’s home is buried here. It was consumed along with so many others in the fall of 2021 when a six-metre-high wall of molten rock poured from Tajogaite.
For 85 days, rivers of lava hot enough to melt gold flowed down the mountainside, destroying everything in their paths and shooting plumes of ash so high in the sky that some of it sprinkled down all the way across the ocean in Barbados. By the time Tajogaite finished heaving out its insides, nearly 3,000 buildings had vanished and 8,000 people had been forced to flee.
Now, many townsfolk have come back, determined to reclaim what was lost. They’ve started rebuilding houses and replanting farms. They’ve dug out roads for new neighbourhoods and laid out a town they’ll call Nuevo Todoque.
After the eruption, Mr. Brito had to move into a hotel. Then his wife died last year. But he never thought about leaving. Instead, he took a small payout from insurance, got some compensation from the government and built a new two-bedroom house.
“I’m 78 years old and I lived all my life here,” he said as he put a final coat of paint on the walls. “I have lived with the volcano since I was a child.”
After he’s moved in, he and his daughter will replant the garden his wife used to cherish, on top of the lava that buried their old home.
Already, just up from the new house, a flash of green has emerged. A small tree has taken root all on its own. Its tiny trunk rises from the rock, and its bright green leaves wave in the sunlight.
Volcanologists like to call La Palma a juvenile island because it’s so young and precocious, at least in geological terms.
It’s around two million years old, making it the second youngest of the Canaries after El Hierro. All of the islands sit on the African tectonic plate, which is pushing closer to Europe at a pace of roughly two centimetres a year.
La Palma sits on one of the plate’s most active hot spots, where magma from deep inside the Earth makes its way to the surface every few decades.
There have been eight eruptions here between 1480 and 2021 – twice as many as the other islands in the Canaries. Before 2021, the most recent were in 1949 and 1971.
Tajogaite had been rumbling for months before it finally blew at 2:02 p.m. on Sept. 19, 2021. The early warnings helped officials prepare and the loss of life was remarkably low: One man died from toxic fumes.
But the toll on homes, buildings and livelihoods was the worst on record. By the time the eruption ended on Dec. 13, lava had spread across nearly 13 square kilometres. And all that most islanders could do was watch in despair.
Philippe and Valerie Renardeau, a French couple who lost their La Palma summer home, keep a pup tent on the property as they clear it for rebuilding, without the government supports available to Canarians.
The Renardeaus hope to restore the house to its former condition.
“We were very sad and we cried a lot,” recalled Valerie Renardeau. “We’ve done a tour of emotions.”
She and her husband, Philippe, came to La Palma six years ago from France. She’s 57 and he’s 61, and they were looking for a winter haven and a place to retire. They adored the island’s climate and easygoing lifestyle and settled on Todoque as a place to put down roots. There, they built a spacious home and added three small cottages, one for each of their children.
They were in France when the eruption happened. By the time they were allowed to return to the area, the house and the cottages were submerged.
The Spanish government offered some compensation to locals to help cover their losses, but foreigners didn’t qualify. So, the Renardeaus took what they got from insurance and rented a digger. It’s taken three years, but they’ve finally cleared a path to the road and a small space for a house.
They want to rebuild everything just as it was, even if it takes months. They still go back and forth to France, but when they’re in La Palma they share a pup tent they’ve put up on the lava, not far from the digger.
“We are turning another page,” Ms. Renardeau said. Then she added with a smile: “Here on La Palma, they say the volcanoes never erupt in the same spot twice.”
Fourteen-year-old Alonso Gomez Camacho watched the eruption from his bedroom window, a few kilometres up the slopes of Tajogaite from his family’s farm on the coast. “My first thought was, ‘Maybe everything is gone,’” he recalled.
The Camachos have been growing bananas on La Palma for generations, just like almost every other farmer on the islands where Plátano de Canarias have long been a specialty.
The family’s home was spared, but their plantation was among the acres of farmland ruined by lava.
But there was a silver lining.
Volcanic ash is rich in minerals and a good nutrient for banana trees. Soon, the Camachos and other farmers were mixing piles of ash into the soil they dug out from the lava.
More than half of the family’s trees have regrown, and it won’t be long before the farm is back to full production. They’ve also reopened a small restaurant they own called Bar El Americano, where farmers often gather now to plan out their future.
“The place is coming back to life. It’s taken years, but it’s going to come back,” said Alonso, who shares the workload of planting and pruning with his parents.
The challenge is still daunting. The volcano caused €1-billion (roughly $1.48-billion) worth of damage, and several roads remain impassable. Nearly 100 families are still living in cargo containers that have been converted into temporary flats. And while the government has provided some financial assistance, many residents say it’s nowhere near enough to rebuild their homes.
Even before the eruption, life wasn’t easy for La Palma’s 85,000 residents; jobs were scarce and the economy was sluggish. And now, the two biggest sources of income – bananas and tourism – have been battered.
“In three months, the volcano destroyed everything. And it’s not going to take us three or six years. I think that it’s going to take us more than 10 or 15 years to recover,” said Javier Llamas, the mayor of Los Llanos, a city of 21,000 in the shadow of Tajogaite. “But now, for me, the most important thing is to keep going.”
For some people on La Palma, the losses can never be itemized or recovered.
Tajogaite covered most of the local cemetery in lava, and with many rows of tombs no longer accessible, families can’t visit their buried loved ones.
Now, every year on Nov. 1, dozens of people gather for an All Saints’ Day service at the cemetery to remember the eruption and mourn those they’ve lost for a second time.
Francisco Brito came this year to pray for his parents and search for their graves. As the service ended, he stepped across the uneven lava close to the place where they once rested. Then he bent over, picked up a small piece of lava and tucked it into his pocket. He reminisced about them later at the Bar El Americano, and came close to tears knowing their gravesites were gone.
“Now they’ve been buried twice,” he said.
Although the daily routine has returned for many in Los Llanos, there’s one group of people still suffering, and feeling forgotten. They live in a line of campers parked on the side of a street: families left destitute by the eruption and squeezed out of the economy.
“We have nowhere to go,” said Victor Jose Pérez, who shares a van with his wife. They have no electricity, scant fresh water and no source of income.
Mr. Pérez is 67 years old and spends his days caring for his wife, who’s in her 60s and a diabetic. They had a 100-year-old house in the mountains, and now they’re trying to make a home on the street.
In Puerto Naos on the coast, the tourists have begun trickling back. The main hotel has partially reopened, as has the beach.
The authorities still worry about the level of carbon dioxide from the volcano, and some apartments and shops remain sealed off. Posters warning of the danger have been plastered all over town and CO2 monitors line the boardwalk.
But Puerto Naos is slowly re-emerging and recovering its place as La Palma’s main lure for tourists. On a warm afternoon in late October, dozens of sunbathers spread out on the famous black sand, coloured by the finely ground lava of past eruptions. “It’s beautiful,” said Claudie Fiencke, who came here from Hamburg with her husband and son. She was wary of the monitors and all the closed shops, but the sun, the sand and the people made the trip worthwhile.
“It’s going to be better than ever,” said Gabriele Martin as he swept the patio of his restaurant, Bar Silikum, about a block from the beach.
He’d been away since the eruption, living in Germany with his partner. But he finally returned and reopened this fall. He wanted to help kickstart La Palma’s renewal.
Gabriele Martin is reopening his restaurant in Puerto Naos.
An unexpected driver of the renewal has been the eruption, as the bleak landscape has become a huge draw for travellers. Jonas Pérez, a local tour guide who runs daily hikes in the mountains and bus trips, says his bookings have soared.
“For good, for bad, the volcano has become a new tourist attraction,” Mr. Pérez said. “Obviously it brought all those problems, but it’s something positive, too.”
Up in the mountains from Puerto Naos, a blanket of ash still covers several houses. Tourists come here to marvel at the power of the volcano and the resilience of locals.
“You see this, it’s amazing,” said Juan Martos, who came from another part of the Canaries with his family to see what Tajogaite had wrought. As he spoke about the recovery and the hardship La Palma has been through, his son bent down, picked up a piece of lava and smiled.
