Lobos Island: nature, beach and crystal clear waters

The 20th century brought Lobos Island its most intimate and poignant chapter of human habitation — one that has become part of local legend on both Fuerteventura and Lanzarote.

The construction of the Faro Punta Martiño (Lobos Lighthouse) in 1865 marked the beginning of a permanent human presence on the island that would last for more than a century. The lighthouse was built to guide vessels through the treacherous Bocaina Strait and to warn of the shallow volcanic reefs that punctuate the channel. Its keepers and their families became, in effect, the permanent population of Lobos Island.

The most celebrated of these lighthouse keepers was Antoñito el Farero — Antonio Hernández Páez, to give him his full name — whose memory is still cherished by the people of Corralejo and Fuerteventura. Born in 1913 on the island of La Graciosa, just north of Lanzarote, Antoñito came from a family with deep maritime roots: his grandparents were among the earliest permanent settlers of La Graciosa, drawn there by the fishing salting industries of the late 19th century. He learned the craft of lighthouse keeping on the nearby islet of Alegranza, and in 1936 — following the death of the assistant keeper on Lobos — he was appointed to the Faro Punta Martiño and crossed the Bocaina Strait with his family to begin what would become more than three decades of island life.

Antoñito lived on Lobos with his wife and eight children, two of whom were born in the lighthouse itself. He was doctor, mechanic, fisherman, cook, and host all at once — when medical emergencies occurred, he improvised; when visitors arrived, he fed them the fish he had caught that morning, turning the lighthouse house into an impromptu restaurant famous for its yellow rice, fresh seafood, and the warmth of its host. His burro Fermín, who had allegedly learned to open beer bottles with his teeth, became something of a celebrity in his own right. Antoñito’s fame spread far beyond the Canaries: in 1978 he was invited to appear on La Clave, the legendary TVE debate programme hosted by José Luis Balbín, where the episode’s theme — “All Solitude” — was clearly chosen with him in mind. All of Spain met Antoñito el Farero that June evening.

He served as keeper until 1968, when the lighthouse was automated and Lobos Island’s era of permanent human habitation effectively came to an end. He passed away in 2001, honoured in his final years with the Silver Medal of the Canary Islands Tourism Awards. As a tribute to this singular figure, one of the primary schools in Corralejo bears his name: the CEIP Antoñito El Farero, which opened in 2007 and today educates hundreds of children from nearly thirty different nationalities — a fitting legacy for a man who lived his entire working life on an island smaller than many of their school playgrounds. A street in Corralejo also carries his name.

The restaurant that now operates near the landing jetty — El Puertito — is run by Antoñito’s descendants, and the menu of fresh fish and seafood rice that made him legendary lives on.

But Antoñito was not the only remarkable person to emerge from the shadow of the Faro Punta Martiño. Decades before him, the lighthouse was home to another family whose child would go on to become one of the most celebrated literary voices of the 20th century in Latin America. Josefina Plá — full name María Josefina Teodora Plá Guerra Galvany — was born on Lobos Island in 1903, the daughter of Leopoldo Plá, a lighthouse keeper who had been posted to the Faro Punta Martiño. She spent her earliest years on the island before her family departed for mainland Spain, and ultimately made her way to Paraguay in 1927, where she became a poet, playwright, essayist, journalist, ceramicist, and human rights advocate of extraordinary breadth and influence. She was nominated multiple times for the Premio Cervantes, received Spain’s Gold Medal for Fine Arts in 1995, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Asunción. She died in Paraguay in 1999, having spent nearly a century enriching the culture of a country she adopted as her own.

Today, Josefina Plá is honoured on the island where she drew her first breath. Just a few steps from the landing jetty at El Puertito, visitors are greeted by a small bust of the writer gazing out towards the sea — one of the first things you see as you step off the ferry onto Lobos Island. At the Faro Punta Martiño itself, two bronze plaques commemorate her birth there, one bearing a relief of a seagull and lines from her own poetry. It is a quietly moving welcome to an island that, in its remote and wind-scoured way, shaped a remarkable human being.

The buildings of the old settlement — the lighthouse keeper’s quarters and ancillary structures — remain standing near the Faro Punta Martiño, visited today by the walkers who make the circuit of the island’s trail network.

Walking past these structures, particularly in the golden light of late afternoon, it is impossible not to feel the weight of all those years of human life — isolated, self-sufficient, profoundly connected to the sea and the volcanic landscape — played out on this tiny rock in the middle of the Atlantic.