The short version: If you step away from the crowded southern resorts, Tenerife’s ignored East Coast holds the island’s genuine timeline. Just a few miles off the TF-1 motorway, you’ll find a freezing UNESCO city that inadvertently became the blueprint for the Americas, towering indigenous Guanche kings guarding a Catholic basilica in Candelaria, and an eerie, abandoned 1940s leper colony sitting quietly in the desert.
On this page6 sections
- Why is La Laguna the architectural blueprint for the Americas?
- Is Santa Cruz de Tenerife worth a quick stop on an East Coast road trip?
- Why are indigenous Guanche Kings guarding the Candelaria basilica?
- What is hidden inside the abandoned Abades leper colony?
- The Verdict: Don’t Skip the East
- Frequently asked questions
Every year, millions of people fly into Tenerife. The vast majority of them step off a budget airline at the southern airport, immediately jump into a waiting taxi or a hire car, and hurtle directly down the TF-1 motorway towards the sprawling resorts of Costa Adeje, Los Cristianos, and Playa de las Américas. The goal is simple: get a pint in hand and a towel on a sun lounger by 2 PM. Once they hit the pool, they rarely look back.
And look, I completely get it. If you’ve come from a damp, grey UK winter looking for guaranteed sunshine and zero hassle, the south of the island delivers flawlessly. But in doing so, the entire East Coast of Tenerife gets practically ignored. It becomes nothing more than a sun-bleached, volcanic blur outside the car window on the way to the hotel buffet.
But if you actually pull off that motorway and head just a few miles up the coast, the artificial resort towns vanish, and you find the real timeline of the island. On this road trip, I went looking for the history the tourist brochures tend to gloss over. I found a misty, freezing UNESCO city that inadvertently became the architectural blueprint for the Americas, the deeply traditional spiritual heart of the island, and a sprawling, post-apocalyptic ghost town sitting quietly in the arid desert.
Here is exactly why you need to dedicate a day to Tenerife’s unexpected,
Why is La Laguna the architectural blueprint for the Americas?
La Laguna was a radical 15th-century Spanish engineering experiment that completely threw out the medieval rulebook. Instead of a cramped, walled maze, it was built on a precise grid system to allow trade winds to flush out disease—a layout so successful it became the exact prototype for imperial expansion in cities like Havana, Lima, and Cartagena.
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I started my journey up north in San Cristóbal de La Laguna. Let’s just call it La Laguna, as the locals sensibly do. It has a lovely ring to it, but the vibe here is fundamentally different from anywhere else on the island. It’s the ancient capital of Tenerife, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and stepping into its pedestrianised streets feels like stepping into a proper, functioning, living city rather than a holiday backdrop designed to extract euros from foreigners.
Geographically, it’s perched right next to Tenerife North Airport, sitting in the Aguere Valley—a flat basin that used to be a shallow lake before it dried up. You’ll notice the climate change the second you open the car door. Because of its elevation (around 550 metres above sea level), it is fiercely proud of its microclimate. It’s frequently draped in a fine, persistent mist that the locals call the panza de burro (the donkey’s belly), and it is notably cooler than the coast. If you turn up here in a vest and flip-flops, you will freeze.
How did La Laguna’s grid layout influence South American cities?
There is a massive, imposing cathedral here—the Cathedral of San Cristóbal de La Laguna—but I didn’t go in. Honestly, I’ve seen enough ornate Catholic cathedrals to last a lifetime. What is infinitely more interesting about La Laguna is the actual tarmac and cobblestones you are walking on.
Look past the lively student population—this is the university capital of the Canaries, which gives the old tavernas a brilliant, chaotic, youthful energy—and you are looking at a radical historical experiment. Back in the late 15th century, when the Spanish founded this town after subduing the local population, European cities were essentially medieval nightmares. They were walled in, cramped, highly unhygienic, and completely chaotic.
When the Spanish engineers arrived in Tenerife, they decided to throw away the medieval rulebook and use a ruler instead. They essentially slapped a giant piece of graph paper onto the Aguere Valley. They built La Laguna with wide, straight streets laid out in a rational grid pattern. It was a massive success, so much so that it became the exact blueprint the Spanish Empire used for their imperial expansion across South America and the Caribbean.
When you wander down the pedestrianised Calle San Agustín, flanked by pastel-coloured mansions and grand wooden doors, you are literally walking the prototype for Old Havana in Cuba, Lima in Peru, and Cartagena in Colombia. It is the architectural grandfather of the Americas.
The Original Air Conditioning
At the time, this grid system wasn’t just about looking neat and tidy; it was a major health and sanitation innovation. The streets were aligned perfectly with the prevailing trade winds—the Alisios. The medical consensus of the 15th century was that a constant Atlantic breeze would flush out stagnant ‘bad air’ and prevent the spread of plagues and diseases.
Today, it means those straight streets act like literal wind tunnels. It explains the permanent chill in the air and why the local cafes do such a roaring trade in hot coffee and churros. It’s incredibly refreshing after the stifling heat of the south, but seriously, bring a jumper.
The History Museum and the Resident Ghost
While wandering, I ducked into the Museum of the History of Tenerife. I’ll be totally honest, I mostly went in because entry was free on that particular day, but I ended up staying for the architecture. The museum is housed in the Casa Lercaro, a 16th-century mansion built by a wealthy family of Genoese merchants.
The exhibits inside dutifully track the island’s history, highlighting the rather stark modern reality that Tenerife now handles over seven million tourists a year. But the building itself is the absolute star of the show. It boasts incredible, intricately carved Canarian pine ceilings and a gorgeous, silent central courtyard that screams “old money.”
It also comes with a cracking local legend. The story goes that Catalina Lercaro, the daughter of the house, threw herself into the courtyard well to avoid being forced into an arranged marriage with an older, wealthy man. Her ghost supposedly still wanders the upper wooden galleries. I didn’t see her, but the floorboards are certainly creaky enough to make you look twice.
Stepping back outside into the mist, you genuinely wouldn’t know you were on one of Europe’s most visited islands. It just isn’t crowded here. You could easily spend an entire day just drinking coffee, browsing the independent bookshops, and soaking in the authentic, slightly moody atmosphere.
Practical Tips for Visiting La Laguna:
- Parking: Do not try to drive into the historic centre; it is highly pedestrianised, fiercely policed, and full of maddening one-way systems. Use the large Las Quinteras car park on the eastern edge of the old town. It’s cheap and a two-minute walk to the main historic streets.
- Weather: Pack layers. The weather can change from bright sunshine to a damp, bone-chilling fog in the space of twenty minutes.
- Best Time to Visit: Mid-morning on a weekday when the university students are milling about, the local bakeries are full, and the city feels incredibly alive.
Is Santa Cruz de Tenerife worth a quick stop on an East Coast road trip?
Santa Cruz is a brilliant, dense, working city of over 200,000 people, but it is entirely too massive for a quick stopover. Packed with striking modern architecture and deep maritime history, it demands its own dedicated day to explore properly rather than just a quick pit stop on your way south.
Watch this section in the video → 6:45
Just a fifteen-minute drive down the steep, winding TF-5 motorway from La Laguna brings you into Santa Cruz, the modern capital of the island. The contrast is immediate and slightly jarring. You swap the quiet, misty grid for brake lights, massive roundabouts, shipping containers, the smell of the ocean, and the hum of a proper, working city of over two hundred thousand people.
Santa Cruz is brilliant, but it’s entirely too dense for a quick stopover on a wider road trip. It’s packed with striking modern architecture—like the futuristic Auditorio de Tenerife, which looks like a white crashing wave—brilliant public squares, and deep maritime history (this is where Admiral Nelson famously lost his right arm in a botched attack in 1797). Because it’s so vast, it needed its own dedicated video. So, for the purpose of this itinerary, we pushed straight through the capital’s traffic, got back onto the southbound TF-1, and continued our journey down the coast.
Why are indigenous Guanche Kings guarding the Candelaria basilica?
Nine massive bronze statues of the Menceyes—the native Guanche kings defeated by the Spanish—stand on the Candelaria waterfront in heavy historical irony. They now serve as permanent guardians staring right back at the Catholic basilica built by the conquerors who wiped out their native political system.
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Leaving the dense concrete of the city behind, the landscape begins to dry out, turning a dusty, volcanic brown, and you arrive at the seaside town of Candelaria. If La Laguna is the historical brain of Tenerife, Candelaria is undeniably its beating spiritual heart.
Right on the oceanfront, dominating the skyline, sits the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria. Inside rests the Black Madonna, the patron saint of the entire Canary Islands. Religion is taken incredibly seriously here. Every August, thousands of pilgrims literally walk from all corners of the island, trekking over the volcanic mountains and marching down the hard shoulders of the motorways, just to pay their respects here.
Who were the Guanche Kings and why are their statues in Candelaria?
But for me, the most fascinating part of Candelaria isn’t inside the echoing halls of the church; it’s what is standing guard outside in the baking sun of the plaza. Lining the sea wall, with their backs to the crashing Atlantic waves, are nine massive, muscular bronze statues of the Menceyes.
These were the indigenous Guanche Kings who ruled the nine distinct kingdoms of Tenerife before the Spanish arrived in the 15th century. The Guanches were a fascinating, tragic people. Believed to be descendants of North African Berbers, they lived a largely Neolithic lifestyle—dwelling in caves, using stone tools, and mummifying their dead—right up until the European conquest. They fiercely resisted the Spanish invasion, using the jagged mountainous terrain to their advantage, before ultimately being defeated by superior weaponry and imported diseases.
There is a heavy, palpable irony to this square. The Spanish conquered the island, aggressively wiped out the native political system, assimilated or enslaved the survivors, and built this Catholic Basilica as a symbol of their ultimate, divine victory. Yet today, it’s the very kings they defeated who stand as permanent, towering, heroic guardians on the waterfront. If you look closely at their bronze faces, they are staring right back at the church and the town that replaced them.
Beyond the Plaza
Once you’ve taken in the heavy history, the town itself is absolutely worth your time. Behind the Basilica, Candelaria reverts to being a traditional, working Canarian fishing village. It has retained all of its local charm, completely immune to the tourist traps further south.
The main pedestrian shopping street, Calle Obispo Pérez Cáceres, is lined with great little independent bakeries and cafes. Sit outside, listen to the very rapid Canarian Spanish being spoken around you, and grab a barraquito. This is a traditional Canarian layered coffee: a shot of condensed milk at the bottom, Licor 43 (a sweet, citrusy liqueur), a shot of espresso, topped with foamed milk, cinnamon, and a slice of lemon rind. It is basically a liquid dessert and it is incredible. Afterwards, take a walk down to the volcanic black sand beaches right on the edge of town. The sand is heavy, coarse, and gets blisteringly hot in the sun—the perfect antidote to the crowded, imported golden sands of the southern resorts.
Practical Tips for Visiting Candelaria:
- Parking: There is a large, usually free, dirt car park located just a short walk south of the main Basilica along the seafront. Do not try to park in the narrow residential streets.
- Access: The walking around the plaza and main shopping streets is very flat and beautifully paved, making it highly accessible for wheelchairs or pushchairs.
- Local Eats: Skip the places immediately bordering the church and stop by a local cofradía (fishermen’s guild restaurant) near the harbour. The aesthetic will be basic—think plastic chairs and paper tablecloths—but you will get incredibly fresh, reasonably priced seafood pulled straight from the Atlantic that morning.
What is hidden inside the abandoned Abades leper colony?
The Sanatorio de Abona in Abades is a sprawling, post-apocalyptic ghost town built by the Franco dictatorship in 1943 to quarantine leprosy patients. Because medical treatments advanced before it was finished, the massive concrete bungalows, hospital, and imposing church were never used, leaving an eerie, graffiti-covered complex decaying in the desert.
Watch this section in the video → 8:54
Leaving Candelaria and continuing south, the greenery disappears entirely, replaced by a stark, dry, beige desert landscape peppered with tough little tabaiba bushes. And here, baking in the sun, lies the strangest stop on the East Coast: Abades.
If you’ve ever driven from the South airport up towards Santa Cruz, you’ve undoubtedly seen a massive, brutalist stone cross looming on a hill from the motorway and wondered what on earth it was. I always assumed it was just an old, oversized parish church. I was very, very wrong.
Why was the Abades leper colony built but never used?
This eerie, sprawling complex is the Sanatorio de Abona—an abandoned leper colony. It looks exactly like a post-apocalyptic film set, and funnily enough, it has been used as one (the BBC’s Doctor Who filmed some episodes here a few years back to simulate a devastated alien world).
But the real, historical context is deeply tragic and rooted in the paranoia of the era. Back in 1943, under the fascist Franco dictatorship, leprosy was a serious, stigmatised, and growing problem on the island, exacerbated by the poverty of the Spanish Civil War aftermath. The government ordered this massive, isolated complex to be built in the harsh desert to quarantine the sick far away from the main population. The architecture is distinctly Francoist: sweeping, imposing, and slightly megalomaniacal.
They built dozens of uniform, concrete bungalows to house the patients, administrative buildings, a hospital, a crematorium, and, dominating the skyline to ensure spiritual salvation, that massive, foreboding church. However, the project was never completed. While it was still being built, significant global advancements were made in the medical treatment of leprosy (specifically the introduction of the drug Dapsone). The disease was quickly brought under control, and this sprawling, expensive sanatorium was entirely obsolete before a single patient ever moved in.
Exploring the Ruins
Today, it is a truly bizarre, slightly unsettling place to walk around. It’s completely open to the public—mostly because there are no fences, doors, or gates left to keep anyone out. The structures have sat here for 80 years, slowly crumbling into the desert dust, surrendered to the elements.
The walls are covered in thick layers of graffiti. Some of it is genuinely beautiful, intricate, large-scale street art; some of it is just crude and slightly terrifying, adding to the undeniably creepy atmosphere. The wind howls straight off the ocean and through the empty, hollow window frames of the church. The acoustics inside the nave are incredible, and honestly, every time a rogue pigeon flapped its wings in the rafters, the sound echoed like a gunshot and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Adding to the surreal, slightly comical nature of the place is what sits right next door. Just a few hundred yards down the hill from these haunting, decaying ruins is a modern, whitewashed holiday village and a lovely little bay where people are casually sunbathing, swimming, and eating ice cream. It is a jarring juxtaposition. Why the local government has never decided to demolish, repurpose, or even secure these structures since the 1940s is a complete mystery, but selfishly, I’m glad they haven’t. It serves as a fascinating, melancholic, open-air monument to a health crisis that was thankfully averted.
Practical Tips for Visiting Abades:
- Parking: You can park pretty much anywhere on the rough dirt tracks leading up to the ruins.
- Footwear: Wear solid trainers or walking boots. It is an unregulated abandoned site, meaning there is loose masonry, rusted rebar, broken glass, and uneven, rocky ground everywhere. Do not wander around in flip-flops unless you want a tetanus shot.
- Safety: Exercise basic common sense. Some of the concrete roofs are clearly sagging and unstable. Admire the architecture and the graffiti from the outside or peer through the doorways rather than climbing on the structures.
The Verdict: Don’t Skip the East
It is crazy to think that millions of people visit Tenerife every year and never see any of this. The East Coast isn’t just a convenient tarmac conveyor belt to get you to your hotel pool. It is an open-air museum of bizarre, beautiful, and sometimes tragic history hiding in plain sight.
By taking just a few hours away from the southern resorts, we walked the very blueprint for the New World in a freezing, misty university town, stood face-to-face with the fierce indigenous kings of the island, and explored a post-apocalyptic ghost town in the baking desert. It completely shifts your perspective on what Tenerife actually is. It’s not just a holiday resort; it’s a complex, ancient rock with a very loud history.
And if you thought the dry desert of the East Coast was wild, you haven’t seen anything yet. For my next trip, I’m heading into the deep north, into the jagged peaks of the Anaga Mountains—a wet, prehistoric jungle that literally predates the Ice Age. Make sure you check out the YouTube channel so you don’t miss that one.
Frequently asked questions
Do you need a car to explore Tenerife’s East Coast?
Yes, renting a car is by far the easiest way to explore. While local buses (TITSA) do connect major towns like La Laguna and Santa Cruz, reaching the isolated ruins of Abades or navigating the steep coastal roads on your own schedule requires a vehicle.
Is the abandoned leper colony in Abades safe to visit?
It is completely open to the public with no fences, but it is an unregulated abandoned site. Wear solid footwear like trainers or walking boots to protect against broken glass and loose masonry, and exercise common sense by not climbing on structurally compromised roofs.
What is the weather like in La Laguna?
Because of its 550-metre elevation, La Laguna has a distinct microclimate that is significantly cooler than the southern resorts. It is frequently draped in a misty fog known locally as the panza de burro, so you should always pack extra layers when visiting.
Who were the Guanches in Tenerife?
The Guanches were the indigenous, largely Neolithic inhabitants of the Canary Islands, believed to be descendants of North African Berbers. They lived in Tenerife and fiercely resisted the Spanish invasion until they were eventually defeated by superior weaponry and imported diseases in the 15th century.
What is a Canarian barraquito?
A barraquito is a traditional Canarian layered coffee that is essentially a liquid dessert. It consists of a shot of condensed milk at the bottom, Licor 43 (a sweet, citrus liqueur), a shot of espresso, and is topped with foamed milk, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and a slice of lemon rind.