Over millions of years, lava built Tenerife layer by layer. In just a few decades, humans added a new one: the touristocene. Since the 1960s, mass tourism has covered the island with hotels, resorts, malls and golf courses—an urban crust rising up the volcanic slopes.
Here I explore how tourism reshaped Tenerife’s landscape, architecture and culture, from 19th-century spa hotels to today’s vast leisure complexes. Rapid, largely unplanned development has left behind both prosperity and decay—a visible geology of tourism.
