Lighthouse of the Week, June 25 - July 1, 2023: Faro de Orchilla, Canary Islands, Spain

 

I checked back this week to see if I had featured lighthouses in the Canary Islands before (suspecting that I had), and it turns out that I had done so.  However, I featured two very modern lighthouses, the Punta del Hidalgo lighthouse on Tenerife and the Arenas Blancas light on La Palma. There are a few other islands, and several other lighthouses, so I went with a more traditional design, and a different island, El Hierro, which is the westernmost island in the archipelago.

Because of its location, the Lighthouse Directory indicates that this is the most remote lighthouse in Spain. Judge for yourself by clicking here to see a map.

One thing interesting about El Hierro;  several years before the destructive-but-beautiful eruption on La Palma, there was an offshore eruption offshore of El Hierro. Nothing ever broke the surface, but the eruption included the formation of steaming floating pumice blocks on the ocean surface.  (See below.)

The submarine eruption was south of the southeastern point of the somewhat triangular island; as you can see on the map, Faro de Orchilla is on a point (Punta Orchilla, naturally) at the southwestern end.  You could argue that there is also a northwestern point as well as a northeastern point, the way the island is angled, but I'll leave that to the geography-minded.

Now, about the lighthouse. The Lighthouse Directory, previously mentioned, tell us this:

"1933. Active; focal plane 132 m (433 ft); white flash every 5 s. 25 m (82 ft) octagonal stone tower with lantern and double gallery, rising from a 2-story square stone base, attached to a 1-story U-shaped keeper's house. 1st order Fresnel lens in use. The tower is unpainted gray stone; lantern dome is gray metallic. This is probably Spain's most remote lighthouse."

The entry in the directory continues that at one point, this western point of El Hierro was the end of the world (for medieval Europeans, at least).

So having said all that, below are pictures of this lighthouse. You may have noticed that on the Google Map link, there are over 400 pictures, so this place is reasonably well-visited.  Not all the pictures listed there show the lighthouse, but a lot of them do.  The third picture shows that there isn't much around this light, except for a lot of cinder cones (switch to satellite view on the Google map if you're into volcanism and want to see more), also explaining why it's a good place for stargazing at night.  Just don't stare at the light from the lighthouse.