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| Tonyi Tamaki visits El Hierro |
The Grandma is very interested in visiting this island because she loves volcanoes and reptiles and El Hierro offers both things. All friends have been waiting the arrival of Tonyi Tamaki, the last member of the group, to start their trip around this beautiful place designated by UNESCO as a Biosphere Reserve.
Before Tonyi's arrival, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 18).
More information: Modals 1-Present and Future
El Hierro, nicknamed Isla del Meridiano, the Meridian Island, is the smallest and farthest south and west of the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. Its capital is Valverde. At 268.71 square kilometres, it is the smallest of the seven main islands of the Canaries.
The name El Hierro, although spelled like the Spanish word for iron, is not related to that word. The H in the name of the metal is derived from the F of Latin ferrum, compare higa for fig. The H in the name of the island dates back to the time in Old Spanish orthography when the distinction between the letters I and J was not yet established and a silent h was written before word-initial ie to ensure that the i was read as a semivowel, not as the consonant.
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| Joseph de Ca'th Lon contemplates El Charco Azul |
The confusion with the name of the metal had effects on the international naming of the island. As early as the 16th century, maps and texts called the island after the word for iron in other languages: Portuguese Ferro, French l'île de Fer, and Latin Insula Ferri.
Nevertheless, the origin of the name ero or erro or yerro is not definitely known. It is thought to be derived from one of several words in the Guanche language of the pre-Hispanic inhabitants, known as Bimbaches. Juan de Abreu Galindo, in a manuscript translated and published by George Glas in 1764, gives the native name of the island as Esero or Eseró, meaning strong.
More information: El Hierro
Richard Henry Major, however, in notes on his translation of Le Canarien, observes that the Guanche word hero or herro, meaning cistern, could easily have lapsed into hierro by a process of folk etymology. It is believed that the Bimbaches had to construct cisterns to save fresh rainwater. The Gran diccionario guanche gives the meaning of the Guanche word hero in Spanish as fuente, spring water source.
The ancient natives of the island, called Bimbaches, were subjected to Spanish rule by Jean de Béthencourt (d.1425) -more by the process of negotiation than by military action. Béthencourt had as his ally and negotiator Augeron, brother of the island's native monarch.
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| The Grandma contemplates El Hierro |
Augeron had been captured years before by the Europeans and now served as mediator between the Europeans and the Guanches.
In return for control over the island, Béthencourt promised to respect the liberty of the natives, but his son eventually broke his promise, selling many of the bimbaches into slavery. Many Frenchmen and Galicians subsequently settled on the island. There was a revolt of the natives against the harsh treatment of the governor Lázaro Vizcaíno, but it was suppressed.
In return for control over the island, Béthencourt promised to respect the liberty of the natives, but his son eventually broke his promise, selling many of the bimbaches into slavery. Many Frenchmen and Galicians subsequently settled on the island. There was a revolt of the natives against the harsh treatment of the governor Lázaro Vizcaíno, but it was suppressed.
There is evidence of at least three major landslides that have affected El Hierro in the last few hundred thousand years. The most recent of these was the El Golfo landslide that occurred about 15 thousand years ago, involving collapse of the northern flank of the island.
The landslide formed the El Golfo valley and created a debris avalanche with a volume of 150–180 km3. Turbidite deposits related to this landslide have been recognized in drill cores from the Agadir Basin to the north of the Canary Islands. Detailed analysis of these deposits suggests that the slope failure did not occur as a single event but a series of smaller failures over a period of hours or days. Local tsunami are likely to have been triggered by these landslides but no evidence has been found to confirm this.
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| Claire Fontaine visits the Lagartario, El Hierro |
The Instituto Vulcanológico de Canarias, Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands, and National Geographic Institute’s seismic monitoring station located in Valverde detected increased seismic activity.
The climate of El Hierro depends on the area. The climate ranges are from humid subtropical climate in the center of the island, to hot semi-arid (BSh) and to a tropical desert climate (BWh) in coastal parts.
El Hierro's size and geography supports entirely endemic species including the critically endangered El Hierro giant lizard, Gallotia simonyi, for which there is a captive breeding programme, allowing its reintroduction.
The non-barren parts of the interior rely on relief precipitation, not much more than the average of 19 rainfall days per year, high relative humidity and geothermal springs. This non-arid parts have thermophilous, geothermal heat-liking, juniper clumps and a pine forest with other evergreens.
In 2000, El Hierro was designated by UNESCO as a Biosphere Reserve, with 60% of its territory protected to preserve its natural and cultural diversity. Among cetaceans in these waters, it is notable that several species of lesser known beaked whales inhabit around the island.
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| Gallotia simonyi machadoi, the giant lizard |
Like the rest of the Canary Islands chain, El Hierro is volcanic and sharply mountainous. One eruption has to date been recorded on the island: from the Volcan de Lomo Negro vent in 1793, lasting a month. Except as landscaped at its harbour towns the shore is rocky and in places precipitous.
El Hierro is a 268.71-square-kilometre island, formed late, about 1.2 million years ago after three successive eruptions, the island emerged from the ocean as a triangle of basaltic dykes topped with a volcanic cone more than 2,000 metres high.
With continued activity resulting in the island expanding to have the largest number of volcanoes in the Canaries, over 500 cones, another 300 covered by more recent deposits, together with approximately 70 caves and volcanic galleries, including the Cueva de Don Justo whose collection of channels exceeds 6 km.
More information: Earth Observatory-NASA
Landslides, plant erosion and seasonal wind erosion have reduced the size and height of the island. The current highest point is in the middle of the island, in Malpaso, 1501 meters high.
Like all of the Canary Islands, El Hierro is a tourist destination. It is served by a small airport -El Hierro Airport at Valverde- and a ferry terminal at Puerto de la Estaca, both of which connect to Tenerife.
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| Jordi Santanyí and a Sabina (Juniperus phoenicea) |
As a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve, El Hierro
has limited construction to less than half of its total surface and
buildings to two floors, maintaining its traditional look and social
structure more than the other six major Canary Islands. The island is part of the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and includes three municipalities: Frontera, Valverde and El Pinar.
Valverde is situated in the northeast and Frontera in the west, both contain several villages. The seat of the island government, Cabildo Insular, is in the town of Valverde, which houses approximately half of the island's population.
El Hierro was used in various parts of Europe for more than 500 years as the prime meridian commonly outside of the future British Empire.
More information: Universitat de Barcelona
Already in the 2nd century A.D., Ptolemy considered a definition of the zero meridian based on the western-most position of the known world, giving a few maps with only positive, eastern longitudes.
In 1634 France, ruled by Louis XIII and his minister Richelieu, decided that Ferro's meridian should be used as a key reference of maps, their considering the island's historic meridian and status as the western-most known land of peoples of the Known World.
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| Tina Picotes enjoys El Hierro |
Flores Island is the westernmost Azore discovered by the Portuguese navigators in the early 15th century -after the First Voyage of Columbus in 1492 scholars and cartographers sometimes grouped them among the new world. The Paris elite considered El Hierro to be exactly 20° west of the Paris meridian, 1⁄18th of its relevant parallel of the globe. Old international maps, outside of Anglo-North American realms, often have a common grid with Paris degrees at the top and Ferro degrees, offset by 20 from Paris, at the bottom. Louis Feuillée also worked on this problem in 1724.
The most important festival of El Hierro is the Bajada de la Virgen de los Reyes, held every four years, on the first Saturday of July. During the festival, the Virgin of the Kings, Virgen de los Reyes, patron saint of the island of El Hierro, is taken from her sanctuary in La Dehesa, in the municipality of La Frontera, and carried to the capital of the island, Valverde, making a tour of 44 kilometers and running through all the towns of El Hierro. The annual festival of the Virgin is celebrated every September 24.
The official natural symbols associated with El Hierro are Gallotia simonyi machadoi, El Hierro giant lizard, and Juniperus phoenicea, Sabina.
More information: Visit Canary Islands
Why does the lizard stick his tongue out?
The lizard sticks its tongue out because that's the way
its listening and looking and tasting its environment.
It's its means of appreciating what's in front of it.
William Shatner
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