Camping in the Canaries: how the permit works, island by island
There are two common beliefs about this and both are wrong.
The first is that you cannot camp in the Canaries at all. The second is that you can camp wherever you like because you are out in the countryside.
What actually exists is a network of designated camping areas run by the island councils, inside protected natural spaces. They are free. And they require prior authorisation, applied for online, with deadlines.
Understanding that one piece of paperwork is the whole difference between a great night out and a fine.
Not illegal, but not open either
The important distinction is not whether you may camp. It is where.
Protected natural spaces cover a very large share of these islands, and wild camping inside them is not permitted. The designated areas are the orderly exception to that rule: marked, equipped sites where you genuinely can spend the night in a tent or an adapted vehicle, provided you asked first.
Put differently, the permit is not a bureaucratic toll. It is the thing that makes what you were going to do lawful.
How the permit works: seven days, and a window to apply
Three things worth knowing before you open the council website.
The maximum stay is seven consecutive days. This appears in the Cabildo de Tenerife's official information and is the usual framework. It is not a guideline, it is the limit of the authorisation.
It is free. You do not pay for the pitch. What you pay for, if anything, is the fuel to get there, because many of these sites are high up and a long way from anywhere.
There is a window for applying, and it has two edges. You cannot apply months ahead, and you cannot apply the night before. The Tenerife council's system works with a maximum of around twenty one days ahead and a minimum of around seven days before the date. Confirm the exact deadlines on the site's own information page on the day you apply, because the council sets these numbers and can adjust them.
That window is the single most common reason this goes wrong. People decide on Thursday that they want to sleep in the hills on Saturday, and by then it is too late.
Island by island: where to apply
Each council runs its own system, and that is the part that confuses people most. There is no single website for the whole archipelago.
Tenerife: the council's official camping areas page at tenerife.es/zonas-de-acampada is the starting point. From there you move on to the electronic office and the booking portal.
Gran Canaria: the application lives directly in the council's electronic office at sede.grancanaria.com, under the camping application procedure.
La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote: each council publishes its own areas and procedure on its own island portal. Look for the environment or electronic office section.
We deliberately do not give deep links to each individual procedure here. Those paths change whenever a council rebuilds its website, and a broken link is worse than none. Your island's council portal is the stable entry point.
The part nearly everyone skips: each site's own page
This is the tip that prevents the most disappointment.
Every camping area has its own information page, and the conditions are not the same everywhere. Capacity varies, so does vehicle access, whether motorhomes are allowed or only tents, whether there is water, whether there are permitted barbecue points and under what conditions, and whether extra restrictions apply during fire risk season.
That page is also where the specific deadlines and the calendar of free dates appear. Reading it properly takes two minutes and answers almost everything.
And one thing that does not depend on the page: in summer and during high risk episodes, councils can close areas or ban fires at short notice. If your plan involves cooking, check on the day itself.
Four things about the ground before you go up
None of this is in the paperwork, but it decides what your night is like.
Altitude. Many sites sit above a thousand metres. The temperature gap with the coast after dark is large, and it catches people out even in summer.
Cloud. On northern slopes the sea of clouds can leave everything damp without a drop of rain falling.
The car. Some sites have parking right there, others leave you a decent walk away. That changes what you can realistically carry.
Rubbish. All of it comes back down with you. That is not a slogan: many of these sites have no collection service.
If what you actually want is a campsite with reception, showers and a marked pitch, that is a different thing and it also exists on the islands. The council network of camping areas is not that, and it is worth knowing before you drive up with the family.
To see what else is on near where you are heading, there is the agenda, and if you are fitting the trip into the calendar, the Canaries in September sets out what to expect from the month.
Cover photo: designated camping area at Playa de Tasartico, Gran Canaria. Photograph: Jarek Prokop, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
