Lanzarote's Timanfaya National Park covers an area of just under twenty square miles on the western side of the island. The Montañas del Fuego (trans. Fire Mountains) lie at its heart and these were at the centre of the six-year long series of eruptions from 1730 to 1736 that altered the course of Lanzarote's history. Huge swathes of fertile agricultural land and nine villages were destroyed, the economy was devastated, and subsequently a large number of the island's inhabitants were forced to emigrate, many of them travelling to Cuba and other parts of the Americas. Incredibly, given the scale and the duration of this cataclysmic event, nobody was killed by these eruptions.
