‘Violent eruption’ after volcano alert on La Palma Island holiday

On the Spanish island of La Palma, a volcano erupted on Sunday in the Cumbre Vieja region. El Pais newspaper reported that a violent explosion occurred in the municipality of El Paso, in the south of the island. Then a large cloud of ash formed.

The outbreak was announced in the past few days with thousands of small earthquakes and slight ground lifts. Authorities called on people near the volcanic area to pack light luggage with their mobile phones, important documents and any medication they might need. At first nothing was known about the evictions in a relatively sparsely populated area. The authorities wanted to wait and see how things went.

The last time a volcanic eruption occurred was 50 years ago, when Tinegia threw lava into the air in 1971, on a small island of 83,000 people in the northwest of the Canary Islands. There is no mass tourism in La Palma as in the more famous islands of Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and Tenerife.