A small rock in the Atlantic: 06/12/09

The Balconies

These are the famous sea-front balconies in Santa Cruz de la Palma. Actually these are the backs of the houses: the fronts look onto the Calle Real.

When I first came to the island in 1990, the woodwork was all green and the plaster all white. For the town's 500th anniversay, in 1993, the whole lot disappeared behind acres of black plastic sheeting for weeks while they were repainted in the best possible guess at the original colours.

Then on 6th November 1993 they held an unveiling ceremony. The new paint job was quite a surprise.

Santa Cruz does a good job of that sort of thing. We had fireworks, music, people on stilts and the giants who normally only come out for Carnival

The owners of the houses were originally promised that the town hall would repaint the balconies in green and white, but most of them elected to keep the new colours for a while. These days they're a mixture between the two styles. Some people say it looks a mess, but I think it's exactly what you'd expect in real town in a free country, rather than a museum.

They have a narrow pavement in front of them, then there's a wall and another pavement perhaps two feet higher, and a main road. The explanation is simple. The houses and the lower pavement are about 350 years old. The higher pavement and road are much newer. I've seen old photographs where the beach comes right up to the old pavement.

Labels: Canaries, Canary islands, La Palma, Santa Cruz

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The Tsunami Risk

You may remember the fuss in 2001 when two geologists, Steven Ward and Simon Day, announced their theory that the west side of the island of La Palma would collapse one day, creating a mega-tsunami that would cross the entire Atlantic and still be anything up to 25 metres high when it hit New York, and indeed everything from Newfoundland in Canada to Recife in Brazil.

These days, almost all geologists seem to disagree.

Certainly there is a fault line, and some movement has been detected, but the fault appears to be 4 km long, not 25 km. There is no evidence that it's 2 km deep, so any landslide would be superficial and might not happen all at once. There's a volcano, but it's comparatively small. And there's a lot of water inside the island, but if the volcano erupts and turns it to steam, it has lots and lots of escape routes through the porous lava. Therefore it won't push the rock into a landslide.

The tsunami that did such awful damage in December 2004 was caused by an earthquake along 1,000 km of sea bed. If a landslide does happen on La Palma, it couldn't possibly be longer than 25 km, so the tsunami will weaken as it spreads out. You'd hardly get a splash the other side of the Atlantic.

By the way, the research was paid for by an American insurance company. And it wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal, which means that other scientists didn't get chance to give opinions before it was broadcast.

My opinion? It's a load of hype.

You can read more at: http://www.lapalma-tsunami.com/tsunami.html
and http://www.iberianature.com/material/megatsunami.html

Labels: Canaries, Canary islands, geology, La Palma, tsunami

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Public Holidays next week and for 2010

Monday and Tuesday are public holidays in Spain

Constitution Day is normally December 6th, but since that was a Sunday, everybody gets Monday off instead. And Tuesday, December 8th is Immaculate Conception. Most shops will be shut for both days, although by law, food shops can't shut for 48 hours straight, and more shops will open in tourist areas.

While I'm on the subject, here's a list of public holidays for 2010

1 January - New Year (Año Nuevo)
6 January - Epiphany / Three Kings Day (Epifanía)
1 April - Easter Thursday (Jueves Santo)
2 April - Good Friday (Viernes Santo)
1 May - Labour Day (Fiesta del Trabajo)
30 May - Canaries Day (Día de Canarias) CANARIES ONLY
12 October - National Day (Fiesta Nacional de España)
1 November - All Saints (Todos los Santos)
6 December - Constitution Day (Día de la Constitución)
8 December - Immaculate Conception (Inmaculada Concepción)
25 December - Christmas Day (Natividad del Señor).

Besides which, next year La Palma will have the big fiesta called the Bajada, in July and August, (more about that another time) and most villages will have a local fiesta when it's their church's saint's day.

Labels: public holidays