bubbling up

With its dramatic volcanic landscapes, intimate new stays, and evolving creative scene, Lanzarote―the easternmost of Spain's Canary Islands-is having a moment

- Toby Skinner

Even six or seven years ago, the whispers about Lanzarote still came with an element of implied surprise. "It's actually really cool," I remember a photographer friend telling me before I went with my partner in 2018. We ended up staying among the palms and black-ash vineyards at Finca Malvasia, e part of the first generation of cool boutique hotels, and falling for the island's big skies, duotone volcanic landscapes, and singular brand of nature-facing modernism.

The "Lanza-grotty" epithet often used in Europe has always been unfair. Away from a few easily avoidable purpose-built coastal resorts, Lanzarote's quiet, unhurried interior is, in some ways, the Canaries' smaller, sunnier answer to Iceland. While wild geology created the hundreds of volcanic cones that dot the landscape, so much of Lanzarote's unique style reflects the influence of César Manrique, the designer, artist, and planner who died in 1992 after having effectively art-directed and color-coordinated the whole island. Manrique is the reason that just about every building is painted in white, often accented with cactus greens, obsidian blacks, and pops of aquamarine. He campaigned to ban billboards and high-rises, decorated roundabouts with kinetic wind toys, and established an enduring culture of building sympathetically with and into the landscape.