As of January 2025, roughly 875,200 inhabitants were living on Gran Canaria. Tenerife had the largest number of inhabitants at 965,000. Overall, the population of Spain in 2025, by gender and autonomous community shows that the Canary Islands were the seventh-largest autonomous community in Spain when ranked by population with 1.11 million male and 1.14 million female inhabitants. The most populous autonomous communities were Andalusia, Catalonia, and Madrid. The largest age group in the Canary Islands was that made of people aged between 50 and 54, accounting for 202,000 inhabitants.

The largest age groups in the Canary Islands as of January 2025 were those between 45 and 54 years old. Specifically, those aged between 50 and 54 years old exceeded 201,000. Tenerife is the community's island with the largest number of inhabitants.

The Spanish island of Lanzarote welcomed around 2.7 million visitors from mainland Spain and other countries in 2022, which shows a full recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Canary Islands are a popular holiday destination.

Species were selected according to number of carcasses and mortality estimations. Population sizes (individuals) were taken from literature [57–59].

The United Kingdom was the main country of origin for inbound tourism in Lanzarote, Spain in 2022, accounting for nearly 1.3 million visitors in the island. The Spanish mainland was the second most popular residence among inbound tourism in this Canary island that year.

In 2023, approximately 14 million international tourists visited the Canary Islands in Spain, which represents an increase of roughly 13 percent versus the previous year. In 2010s, the record number of visitors in this Spanish archipelago was set in 2017.

Eight islands with lots of options for tourists

The Canary Islands, or the Canaries, are a group of islands off the Northwestern coast of Africa and one of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities. The archipelago is made up of eight inhabited islands: Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro and La Graciosa. Tenerife is most visited island, followed by Gran Canaria and Lanzarote, all popular vacation travel destinations, especially for European holidaymakers.

Main source markets

The Canaries are the third most visited Spanish region after the Balearic Islands and Catalonia. The UK and Germany are two key visitor markets for the islands. Along with France they make up the three leading international tourist markets visiting Spain. Spanish residents also commonly visit the islands for domestic trips (494520).

As with arrivals of international tourists, the visitor expenditure has increased significantly due to a rapid recovery from the coronavirus crisis. In 2022, foreign tourists who visited the Canary Islands spent more than they did in 2019.

Anchialine species show restricted geographic ranges, high habitat specificity and small population sizes. These factors make them particularly vulnerable to human activities, yet little is known about their ecology and evolutionary history. Munidopsis polymorpha is a decapod endemic to an anchialine cave system of the Corona lava tube in Lanzarote (Canary Islands). The present study, the first genetic survey conducted on this largely unknown species, was designed to characterize its genetic diversity, population structure and recent demographic history using sequence data for the COI gene and eight microsatellite. A single haplotype was identified in the mitochondrial dataset. Nuclear genetic diversity was also low (average= 4.375 ± 1.685). No significant genetic structure was detected between sampling sites and years, either by AMOVA (FST = 0.006, P= 0.110) or Bayesian clustering analysis (K = 1), indicating this species should be treated as a single management unit. Neither did we find evidence for a recent bottleneck event, and estimates of effective population size were extremely low (∼ 50). The lack of population structure, low genetic diversity and extremely low effective population size reinforces the high degree of isolation and endemicity of this species and consequently the need to implement appropriate management actions.

The Canary Islands were settled in the first millennium AD by colonizers likely originating from North Africa. The settlers developed a farming economy with barley as the main crop. Archaeological evidence suggests the islands then remained isolated until European sea-travellers discovered and colonized them during the 14th and 15th centuries. Here we report a population study of ancient DNA from twenty-one archaeobotanical barley grains from Gran Canaria dating from 1050 to 1440 cal AD. The material showed exceptional DNA preservation and genotyping was carried out for 99 single nucleotide markers. In addition 101 extant landrace accessions from the Canary Islands and the western Mediterranean were genotyped. The archaeological material showed high genetic similarity to extant landraces from the Canary Islands. In contrast, accessions from the Canary Islands were highly differentiated from both Iberian and North African mainland barley. Within the Canary Islands, landraces from the easternmost islands were genetically differentiated from landraces from the western islands, corroborating the presence of pre-Hispanic barley cultivation on Lanzarote. The results demonstrate the potential of population genetic analyses of ancient DNA. They support the hypothesis of an original colonization, possibly from present day Morocco, and subsequent isolation of the islands and reveal a farmer fidelity to the local barley that has lasted for centuries.

Hospitality business and travel agencies in the Canary Islands employed more than 125 thousand people in 2021, which shows a decline of -7.4 percent versus the previous year. This was the second consecutive decline in the employment on tourism in the Spanish autonomous community, after a steady increase throughout the past decade.

Esta estadística muestra la población de la comunidad autónoma de Canarias a 1 de abril de 2023 y 2024, por isla. La isla de Tenerife era la que tenía una mayor población en ambos años, con más de 950.000 habitantes. En la isla vecina de Gran Canaria, la población ascendía a unas 869.000 personas en 2024.