Cochineal: the insect that was 90 per cent of what these islands sold
Between Guatiza and Mala, in the northeast of Lanzarote, the road runs through kilometres of prickly pear planted in rows. This is not accidental landscape: it is a crop, and an unusual one.
A tiny whitish insect lives on those pads. Crush one between your fingers and it comes out red. A deep red, hard to obtain any other way, and for twenty years it was what held up the islands' economy.
What it actually is
Cochineal is an insect native to Mexico that lives on the prickly pear cactus. The female produces carminic acid, the compound behind that red.
The process is simple and has not changed: harvested by hand, dried and ground. That gives you carmine, a natural colourant still used today in food and cosmetics.
That red lipstick, that strawberry yoghurt, that pink drink: in many cases the colour comes from an insect that grew on a cactus.
Twenty years of wealth, and an abrupt end
This is the part that surprises people.
The crop took off once foreign trade was legalised, and prickly pear multiplied across the islands in the early nineteenth century. The destination was the textile industry of France and the United Kingdom, which paid very well for a stable red.
The golden age lasted about twenty one years, from 1845 to 1866. At its peak, cochineal accounted for roughly 90 per cent of Canarian exports. Almost everything leaving the islands was this red powder.
The end began in 1862, and it did not come from a pest or a drought. It came from the International Exhibition in London, where advances in artificial dyes were presented. Within a few years synthetic carmine existed, cost less and could be made in unlimited quantity.
The market vanished in little over a decade. It is one of the clearest cases of an entire economy built on a product that a laboratory made unnecessary.
What is left today
Two villages. The crop, which once covered a good part of the archipelago, has shrunk to practically just Guatiza and Mala on Lanzarote.
And it makes sense again, for a reason nobody could have predicted in 1866: demand for natural colourants. What sank cochineal was chemistry; what sustains it today is distrust of chemistry.
The Canarian product also carries origin recognition, which is unusual for a dye.
What to see, and how to look at it
You drive through the prickly pear stretch between Guatiza and Mala, and from a distance it just looks like more Lanzarote cactus. It changes once you know what you are looking at:
The rows are ordered, not scattered. This is a plantation, with regular spacing.
The white patches on the pads are the cochineal, protected by a waxy coating. They are not disease or neglect: they are the harvest.
Do not pick anything or enter the plots. These are private, low yield crops, and a damaged pad is lost production.
The Cactus Garden sits on the same stretch, which gives the area an extra layer: the prickly pear district ended up with the island's best known cactus garden.
To fit it into your route, the Lanzarote guide. And if crops you can visit interest you, ecotourism in the Canaries gathers farms and wineries on the same logic.
Sources
History of cochineal in the Canaries: expansion in the early nineteenth century, golden age from 1845 to 1866, up to 90 per cent of exports, decline from 1862 after the London International Exhibition and the arrival of artificial carmine.
Current state of the crop, reduced to Guatiza and Mala on Lanzarote.
Cover photo: prickly pear plantation in Guatiza, Teguise, Lanzarote. Photograph: Bolinhodeamor, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
