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What if I’m the bad tourist? How to go on vacation and try not to be part of the problem

Enrique Rey — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 03:30:00 GMT

In 2019, there was a lot of talk about “flight shame,” a feeling the Swedes call “flygskam,” which refers to the embarrassment that arises when traveling by plane while simultaneously being aware of the carbon dioxide emissions it generates. It was even said that flygskam, which gave rise to an entire social movement (some sports and cultural figures began using trains or sailboats for their commutes), would threaten the airline industry, with passengers increasingly embarrassed to get off their commercial flights. However, data like those from Spain (222 million people passed through its airports in 2018, while 236 million did so in 2023) show that citizens’ ecological awareness is still not as strong as their desire to see the world.

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New cocaine trafficking methods: From stockpiling drugs until prices rise to using offshore drop-offs

Juana Viúdez — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 04:00:00 GMT

After two years of record seizures — including the historic bust of 13 tons hidden in a container in the Port of Algeciras in the Spanish province of Cádiz — drug trafficking networks are trying to evade police pressure with new methods to smuggle the drug or are turning to alternative tactics, such as stockpiling until prices rise. These trends include leaving cocaine floating at sea, marked with buoys for narco-boats to pick up — a method known as “drop-off” — or using narco-submarines capable of transporting large quantities.

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The civil engineer who stopped a port from being built in Tenerife

Guillermo Vega — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Civil engineer Carlos Mallo, 36, often recounts how it all began in 2016, when he started working on the insular highway in Tenerife in the so-called Teno-Rasca marine strip, a 70,000-hectare Special Conservation Zone (SAC) on the western tip of the island. This enclave, which borders three municipalities, constitutes a strategic ecosystem for sea turtles, seagrass beds, seaweed, and one of the largest whale sanctuaries in the world. “At that moment, I started thinking about that wonderful waterfront, overlooking [neighboring island] La Gomera. I thought it was unique in the world and that they were building a road that would connect to a port, which would destroy that area,” he recalls in a telephone conversation from San Francisco.

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The Beast’s environment: How a supermassive black hole shapes the fate of the Milky Way

Eva Villaver — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 11:45:51 GMT

We know that Sagittarius A* (Sag A*), the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, is supermassive and rotates rapidly, dragging space-time along with it. And this small detail—its rotational speed—which at first glance might seem trivial, conceals clues about its formation process.

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The mystery of the Amazigh people in Gran Canaria, Spain

Vicente Olaya — Sat, 29 Jul 2023 11:00:00 GMT

In the first century B.C., a few hundred Berbers — also known as the Amazigh people — landed on the coast of Gran Canaria, the third-largest island of the archipelago that is now known as the Canary Islands. They didn’t come alone: they brought their ceramics, the alphabet, domestic animals (including pigs, goats, sheep and dogs), seeds (barley, wheat, lentils and peas) and fig trees. Their culture soon spread throughout the island. It evolved for about 1,400 years until, in 1487, following its conquest by the Catholic Monarchs, the territory was incorporated into the Crown of Castile.

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When movie and TV locations become hot travel destinations

Galo Martín Aparicio — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 18:10:20 GMT

Two common conversation starters are “Where are you going on vacation?” and “What are you watching on television?” No one ever asked Vincent van Gogh about television, but Japan would have been his answer to the first question. The Dutch artist and other Impressionist painters of the time loved the Japanese woodblock prints called ukiyo-e because of their use of light, the landscapes they depicted and the technique for making them. Utagawa Hiroshige’s Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake inspired Western sensibilities and sparked an interest in travel to Japan. Movies and television are now doing what paintings and books used to do.

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Light pollution is weakening the world’s star-gazing telescopes

Miguel Ángel Criado — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 16:52:03 GMT

For centuries, astronomical observatories were located in cities. Astronomers looked at the stars from the centers of Berlin, London and Madrid. But when electric light came to the cities, the observatories had to move to the suburbs. They kept getting pushed further and further, and higher and higher. Now the functioning observatories of Europe and the United States are found on mountain peaks like Calar Alto (southern Spain) and Roque de los Muchachos (in Spain’s Canary Islands). But even that is not enough to shield them from light pollution. A recent study of the night skies over the world’s main observatories showed that most have so much artificial light nearby that it’s blinding their telescopes.

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Centuries later, the legacy of European colonialism is still alive in the natural landscape

Miguel Ángel Criado — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 03:48:08 GMT

There are thousands of miles separating the north of Australia, the south of South Africa and eastern Canada. There is also a vast distance between the Mexican Pacific and Spain’s Canary Islands, or between Southeast Asia and Suriname. However, their vegetation is more alike than nature would dictate. It is the still visible trace of European colonialism.

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Get your rocks off: Tenerife calls time on stone towers left on beaches

Octavio Toledo — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 15:17:51 GMT

The Canary Island of Tenerife is sick of the towers of stones that tourists are building along its Jardín and El Beril beaches. They may give the coastline an original and not unattractive twist but environmentalists are far from pleased as shifting the stones from their natural “habitat” is threatening the island’s flora and fauna. In a bid to reverse the effects, a group of volunteers was due to set about returning them to their rightful place and the beach back to its original state this past weekend.

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