The economic crisis has reached Fuerteventura. Radio Megawelle (a radio station on the Canary Island of Tenerife) reports that as much as 10.000 persons have already left the island due to the bad economic situation. Source for this information is according to the radio station the vice counsellour for welfare and immigration from the government of the Canaries, Natividad Cano.

Unfortunately landlords and businesspeople confirm this situation again and again.

The reasons are probably not only to be found in the "economic crisis" but certainly also in the change of tourism during the last few years. More and more hotels with all-inclusive offers have certainly also had their share in this development. Restaurants and catering businesses suffer just like car rentals and shopping precincts. If guests don't leave their hotel anymore, other businesses don't get much. 

Of course these partly very low prices make private holiday accommodation or generally any other accommodation without all-inclusive offers suffer, too.

Tourists will have to wait if due to that development prices will increase again in the medium term. 

As reported in various news programs, UNESCO plans to turn Fuerteventura into a biosphere reserve. 

News, however, differ about this subject. Some news pages report that Fuerteventura has only proposed a motion for a biosphere reserve and will be declared as such in may, other ones have communicated for already some time that Fuerteventura is already a UNESCO biosphere reserve.

In the official UNESCO list (for Spain) we haven't found Fuerteventura yet (as to  02/04/2009). Other Canary Islands such as Lanzarote, Gran Canaria, La Palma and El Hierro have already been listed. 

We are looking forward to it - also to possible changes on Fuerteventura.