Puerto de la Cruz

Overview

Puerto de la Cruz is a black sand town on the north coast of Tenerife, at the seaward end of the La Orotava valley, with about 31,100 people living in 8.73 km². Come for the waterfront: the town beach and the sea water pool complex a kilometre along from it were both laid out by the Lanzarote artist César Manrique, and the protected old centre sits between the two.

The valley climate is the reason the place became a resort at all. Annual mean temperature is 21.9 °C, the classification is hot semi-arid, and the gap between the August mean high of 28.9 °C and the January mean high of 22.2 °C is barely six degrees. What varies is cloud, not heat. Air pushed up the valley banks against the slope and can sit over the coast for days.

Costa Martiánez, the pool complex on Avenida de Colón, is the single thing worth crossing the island for. Manrique’s main scheme opened on 30 April 1977, following a first phase of pools in 1971, and covers around 100,000 m² of terraces, gardens and salt water, with a central artificial lake of 33,000 m² of which 15,000 m² is open water. It has been protected as a Bien de Interés Cultural in the historic garden category since 24 May 2005, which is unusual company for a lido.

Playa Jardín is the beach itself, black sand again, rebuilt by Manrique out of several older strips with planted gardens behind it and a breakwater in front. It reads as one beach and is officially three: playa del Charcón, playa del Castillo and playa de Punta Brava, which locals split again into playa Chica, playa Julián and playa Grande.

Loro Parque sits at the Punta Brava end of the beach and is the other reason people arrive. It opened on 17 December 1972 under Wolfgang Kiessling, covers 135,000 m², holds roughly 4,000 parrots of 350 species and subspecies alongside other animals, and has counted more than 40 million visitors. The old town between the beach and the pools has been a Bien de Interés Cultural in the conjunto histórico category since Decreto 65/2006 of 23 May, so the balconied merchant houses around Plaza del Charco are legally fixed in place. Among the wider Canary Islands this is the north-coast option: cooler, greener and older than the southern resorts.

History

Before the Castilian conquest this coast belonged to the menceyato of Taoro, and people lived in the natural caves of the Riscos de Martiánez, the same slope the pool complex now sits under. Burial grounds and rock-cut ritual sites of the cazoletas y canales type, cup marks joined by carved channels, survive in the area. The town’s own history office records aboriginal settlement at La Paz and necropolises on the Martiánez slope.

Port activity along this shore is documented from 1502, but for two centuries the settlement was an appendage of La Orotava uphill. Sugar went out first, then wine, whose export boom fell in the second half of the 16th century. The name records the shift: charts called it Puerto de la Orotava, and the Cruz came from a cross the settlers planted on the newly built quay towards the end of that century.

A decision in 1603 to fix a site for a church and its square is the point at which a port becomes a town, and the Real Provisión granted by Felipe IV on 3 May 1651 let residents appoint their own alcalde pedáneo. About 2,800 people lived here by the end of that century.

The volcanic eruption that wrecked Garachico’s harbour in 1706 handed Puerto de la Cruz the island’s main port, and the traffic arrived overnight. It did not last. The General Command moved to Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1723 and pulled maritime traffic with it, the wine trade lost ground to competition and trade restrictions, and the population had only reached about 3,800 by 1800. Independence from La Orotava came in stages regardless: an elected municipal corporation in 1772, full municipal separation and the present name in 1808.

What replaced the wine money was science. A royal decree of Carlos III dated 17 August 1788 created the Jardín de Aclimatación de La Orotava here, to hold tropical species on their way to mainland Spain; it was inaugurated in 1792 with its first 35 plants and covers 20,000 m². The visitors who followed were naturalists and invalids rather than merchants: William Wilde, Alexander von Humboldt and Sabin Berthelot all passed through.

The 19th century was rough. Yellow fever in 1811 killed 700 vecinos, a fifth of the population, and a flood in 1826 destroyed vineyards and buildings. The municipality gained territory in 1847 and agriculture turned to bananas and cochineal, and it was late in the century that the Gran Hotel Taoro went up and started the hotel business proper.

Modern tourism arrived with infrastructure. The airport opened in 1946, the government declared the town a site of national tourist interest on 13 October 1955, and the 1960s brought the building boom that made it the leading tourist municipality in the Canaries. Manrique’s pools followed in 1971 and 1977, an attempt to give a town with almost no natural beach something to swim in.

Two later dates shape what you see now. On 29 May 1983, during the second Festival de Cine Ecológico y de Naturaleza held here, the Manifiesto de Tenerife was made public; it is treated as a precursor text of political environmentalism in Spain. Then Decreto 65/2006 of 23 May listed the old town as a conjunto histórico, which is why the streets behind the harbour still look like a merchant port and not a promenade.

Visiting

Plaza del Charco is where to start, both because the shopping streets radiate from it and because the buses stop nearby. The fountain at its centre, the pila, dates from 1880. Nothing about the town itself is ticketed: streets, squares, the harbour and the beaches are open at any hour, with no gate and no closing time. Every attraction named below is a separate operation with its own entrance fee, and none of them publishes a price you can rely on from abroad, so check on the day.

The municipal tourist information office is in the Casa de la Aduana on Calle Las Lonjas, and the number is +34 922 386 000. Go in for the building as much as the maps. Founded in 1620 as the royal customs house, it now belongs to the Cabildo de Tenerife, which restored it and put a crafts shop on the ground floor and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl in the upper storey.

West of the church sits La Ranilla, the old fishing quarter. Its name did the same journey the town’s did: portuenses are the townspeople in general, but ranilleros originally meant only the people of this one neighbourhood, which had the strongest fishing tradition, before the label spread. The parish church a block inland, Nuestra Señora de la Peña de Francia, was first built in 1697.

Keep walking west and you reach the Castillo de San Felipe facing the beach. The 17th century fort is now a municipal cultural venue with concerts, readings and exhibitions, and it has hosted the Cruzarte young art competition every year since 1993, with categories for painting, short fiction, poetry, photography, short film and video art. Playa Jardín starts here, and the quietest end is the Punta Brava stretch furthest from the centre.

Costa Martiánez is at the opposite, eastern end of the seafront on Avenida de Colón, and it is a half day rather than a swim: pools of different depths around the central lake, terraces, gardens and restaurants. A new terraza mirador inside the complex has been running since 3 August 2026, with food and drink service and Atlantic views, and was formally inaugurated on 21 August.

Uphill from the seafront, the Jardín de Aclimatación de La Orotava is at Calle Retama 2, 20,000 m² of trees planted continuously since 1792. It is a genuine climb from the coast, so take a bus up and walk down if the day is warm.

The archaeological museum is the one indoor stop that rewards a detour on a wet afternoon. Its collection runs to more than 2,600 items of aboriginal Guanche material.

Loro Parque is at Punta Brava, past the far end of Playa Jardín, and needs most of a day if you go at all. Bus line 381 runs from Plaza Reyes Católicos to Punta Brava by way of the park. Buy tickets through the park’s own channels and treat it as a day out on its own, not an add-on to a beach afternoon.

Tips

• Buses are TITSA, and the express lines to the capital are 102, which runs Santa Cruz to Tenerife Norte airport to Puerto de la Cruz, and 103, which runs Santa Cruz to Puerto de la Cruz direct. Line 343 connects the town to Los Cristianos by way of both airports. Timetables and fares live on titsa.com, and customer service is 922 531 300 between 08:00 and 20:00.

• For the mountain, line 348 runs from Puerto de la Cruz to El Portillo and Las Cañadas del Teide, and line 345 goes up the valley to La Orotava and Aguamansa. Confirm the day’s departures on titsa.com before you commit, and take a jacket: you are leaving a coast that averages 21.9 °C for ground above 2,000 m.

• Line 352 circles the La Orotava valley by way of the botanical garden, which saves you the uphill walk.

• The town hall is at Plaza de Europa 1, the switchboard is 922 378 400, and the public counter opens Monday to Friday from 08:00 to 15:00. The same site publishes the duty pharmacy rota, which is the quickest way to find something open on a Sunday.

• Two dates are local public holidays: 3 May, the Exaltación de la Santa Cruz and the commemoration of the town’s founding, and 15 July, the Virgen del Carmen. If you are here in mid-July, book accommodation early and expect the seafront to be closed to traffic.

• The Carmen celebration is the busiest day of the local year. Fishermen carry the images of the Virgin and San Telmo onto a boat at the fishing quay for a procession along the coast, and more than 30,000 people come from across the archipelago to watch.

• Carnival here has its own set pieces: the queen’s gala, the Entierro de la Sardina, the Coso Apoteosis parade, and Mascarita Ponte Tacón, an obstacle race through the main streets in which competitors have to wear heels of at least 10 cm.

• Outside Carnival, the town runs Mueca, a street arts festival staged across the squares, and since 2002 a festival of early and Baroque music during Semana Santa.

• Pack for warmth rather than heat and for cloud rather than rain. January mean lows sit at 15.1 °C and August mean highs at 28.9 °C, so swimming is plausible in any month. Black sand also gets far hotter underfoot than pale sand, so bring something to walk in.

• Renting a car makes sense only if you are leaving town. The whole municipality is 8.73 km² and the centre sits at 4 m above sea level, so the coastal half of it is a flat walk end to end. The buses above cover everything else.