Fuerteventura

⚠️ Entry rules and local regulations change without notice. Before booking, check entry requirements and local rules — visas, access, nature reserves, visitor quotas — with the official authorities.

The second largest of the Canary Islands, Fuerteventura unrolls more than 150 kilometres of golden-sand beaches between Saharan-style dunes and turquoise waters. Swept by the trade winds, it is a paradise for surfing, windsurfing and kitesurfing, while its whitewashed villages, Majorero cheese and ochre volcanoes charm travellers in search of authenticity.

The oldest island, and the emptiest

Fuerteventura is the oldest of the Canary Islands — around twenty million years, worn down to ochre hills and wide valleys — and the closest to Africa, a hundred kilometres from the Moroccan coast. It is the second largest after Tenerife and by far the least populated for its size; huge stretches of its interior are treeless and silent, and the whole island has been a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 2009. People come for one thing, the beaches, and they are the best in the archipelago.

In the north, the Corralejo dunes run for eight kilometres along a turquoise shore, with the islet of Lobos offshore. In the south, the Jandía peninsula holds Sotavento, a vast lagoon-beach where the world windsurfing and kiteboarding championships are held each summer, and on the wild western side Cofete — twelve kilometres of empty sand under a mountain wall, reached by a dirt track, with no lifeguard and a dangerous sea.

Inland, Betancuria was the first capital of the Canaries, founded in 1404 and hidden in the hills to escape pirates; it is a white village of a few hundred people with a church and a museum. The island's goat's cheese, queso majorero, has its own appellation and is among the best in Spain.

Any month, windy from May to August

Fuerteventura is warm and dry all year — 20–22 °C in winter, 27–29 °C in summer, hardly any rain, and a sea at 18–23 °C. The trade wind is strongest from May to August, which is high season for windsurfers and kitesurfers and a nuisance for everyone else on the exposed beaches; the east coast around Caleta de Fuste is the most sheltered. Winter is the calmest and busiest period for beach holidays. The calima haze blows in a few days a year.

Distances are long — a car is the island

The airport is next to Puerto del Rosario on the east coast; Corralejo is 40 minutes north, Jandía an hour and a half south. Fuerteventura is Spain and the EU — no formality for EU citizens, euro. The island is a hundred kilometres long and public transport is thin: a hire car is close to essential, and a 4×4 if you want Cofete. Fuel up — the stations are far apart in the south.

Ferries cross to Lanzarote from Corralejo in about 30 minutes, and small boats go to Lobos for the day. At the table: queso majorero, fresh and aged, the goat stew, and the grilled fish of Ajuy and El Cotillo. Respect the red flags: the western beaches have strong currents and no rescue service.

Essentials & your questions