Teide National Park

**By hotspot volcanism in the middle of a tectonic plate — not at its edge, which is what makes them unusual.** ⚠ **The normal case**: **most volcanoes lie at plate **boundaries**** — ✅ **where plates collide or separate**; **like the Pacific ring of fire**. ✅ **The Canaries are not that**: **they sit in the middle of the African plate** — ⚠ **far from any boundary**; **so where does the magma come from?** ✅ **The likeliest explanation — a hotspot**: **a plume of hot mantle material rising from depth** ⚠ **and piercing the plate from beneath, like a blowtorch under a moving metal sheet**. ✅ **The plate moves and the hotspot stays** — **producing **a line of islands** that grow older in the direction of travel**: ⚠ **Fuerteventura and Lanzarote in the east are the **oldest** (about 20 million years)**, ✅ **and El Hierro and La Palma in the west the **youngest** (about 1–2 million)**; **with Tenerife between**. ✅ **The same pattern appears in Hawaii** — **an island chain from a hotspot**. ⚠ **And the volcanoes remain active**: **Tenerife last erupted in 1909, Lanzarote in 1824, and La Palma in **2021**** — ⚠ **an eruption that ran 85 days and destroyed villages**; ✅ **and monitoring is continuous and detailed**.