More than 1,700 earthquakes and counting: Tenerife’s shaking reaches its two biggest cities

For months the tremors have rattled quiet villages beneath Mount Teide, barely noticed beyond the southwest. Now a new swarm out at sea has reached Tenerife’s two biggest cities, in what is shaping up to be the island’s busiest year for earthquakes on record.

A sequence of four earthquakes struck late on Wednesday August 26, with epicentres in the sea around 30 kilometres north of Tenerife, close to Punta Hidalgo.

The strongest measured magnitude 3.6, according to Spain’s National Geographic Institute (IGN), and came a little under an hour after an initial magnitude 3.0 tremor in the same spot.

Residents in Santa Cruz and La Laguna felt the ground move

IGN classified the main tremor’s intensity as II, meaning it was noticed mainly by people who were resting or sitting still rather than moving around. Perceptible reports came in from Tacoronte, the coastal stretch of La Laguna and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, home to close to half of Tenerife’s population. Two smaller aftershocks, of magnitude 2.3 and 2.8, followed within the next half hour. No damage or injuries were reported, and there was no disruption to flights, ports or daily life on the island.

Why this swarm looks different from the one under Teide 

Almost all of Tenerife’s earthquake headlines this year have come from beneath Las Cañadas del Teide, in the southwest of the island near Guía de Isora, Vilaflor de Chasna and Santiago del Teide. Those tremors typically sit eight to 15 kilometres below sea level and have been linked by scientists to circulating magmatic fluids rather than rising magma.

Wednesday’s sequence was recorded roughly 34 to 36 kilometres deep, in open water off the opposite end of the island. It is the third distinct area to show unusual activity in 2026, after a magnitude 4.1 quake near the submarine Enmedio volcano between Tenerife and Gran Canaria in February, and a magnitude 4.8 quake north of Gran Canaria in May, the strongest recorded anywhere in the Canary Islands in five years. 

2026 is already Tenerife’s busiest year for earthquakes on record

By the end of July, Tenerife’s interior alone had recorded 1,725 earthquakes since January, more than double the roughly 740 registered across the whole of 2025. July was the busiest month by far, with 641 tremors, most of them clustered around Pico Viejo.

Itahiza Domínguez, head of IGN operations in the Canary Islands, has said repeatedly that average activity has yet to return to the levels seen before February, when the current run of swarms began, and that scientists want to see how the data from August and September develops before drawing firm conclusions.

No change to the volcanic alert level

The regional volcanic emergency plan, Pevolca, has kept Tenerife’s alert level at green throughout the year, meaning the plan itself has not been activated. Its scientific committee said as recently as August 6 that there were no signs of magma rising towards the surface, ruling out a short-term eruption.

Montserrat Román, head of Civil Protection for the Canary Islands government, has said the extended period of activity is instead being used to update emergency protocols, run drills and expand the Es-Alert warning system, drawing on lessons from La Palma’s 2021 eruption. 

IGN said it was continuing to monitor the waters off Punta Hidalgo for further aftershocks, though none had been reported by Thursday morning.