The world's first energy self-sufficient island — raw Canarian wilderness
El Hierro is the smallest and westernmost of the Canary Islands — once believed to be the edge of the known world (the prime meridian ran through it on maps until the 17th century) — and the least visited. The island became the world's first fully renewable-energy self-sufficient territory in 2013, running entirely on wind and hydroelectric power. Extraordinarily rugged, with ancient laurisilva cloud forest, submarine lava flows that create natural swimming pools, and a topography that looks like the moon, it is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve with serious diving (the Mar de Las Calmas marine rese…
El Hierro's indigenous Bimbache people — the local Guanche population — were largely enslaved or killed by Spanish conquistadors in the 15th century, making it one of the first Canary Islands to be 'pacified'. The island's position at the westernmost point of the then-known Old World made it the logical reference point for the prime meridian — from Ptolemy onwards, cartographers used El Hierro's longitude as zero until the Greenwich Convention of 1884. The garoe tree — a legendary tree whose leaves condensed Atlantic fog into fresh water, providing the island's entire water supply — is a cent…