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• ‘Canary Islands: In the Shadows of Volcanoes’ is the 52-minute audiovisual piece on the biological wealth and landscape of the archipelago that will reach 87 million households in the United States and do a tour of the television sets in various European countries through the National Geographic channel.

The treasured landscapes of the Canary Islands will reach the living rooms of millions of European and North-American viewers through the acclaimed channel National Geographic. It has acquired the documentary ‘Canary Islands: In the Shadows of Volcanoes’, directed by the award-winning filmmaker Pedro Felipe Acosta and recognised in 2015 with the Grand Prize of the Birds and Nature Festival in Abberville (France).

The recent acquisition of the documentary by the National Geographic means it will be broadcast in the United States through its own channel and beamed into 87 million North-American households, while its European transmission will do a tour of television sets in Denmark, Greece and Poland, although in the latter country, through Canal+. Its broadcast is also being negotiated in France and Belgium, which would be important platforms for the international promotion of the islands.

The film production, by Alas Cinematografía and Motion Pictures, was sponsored by Promotur Turismo de Canarias, together with the Museums of Tenerife and the collaboration of the inter-island councils of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, to reflect the immensity of the natural and geological heritage of the Canary Islands. The film was conceived as a tool in environmental education, offering a true picture of the natural and biological wealth of the archipelago and the oceans surrounding the islands teeming with marine wildlife including whales (such as pilot whales), orcas and dolphins.

The 52-minute long documentary starts in Teide National Park and moves on to the semi-desert plains of Fuerteventura with its unique wildlife including a subspecies of the Egyptian vulture known locally as ‘el guirre’. The giant lizards on the island of El Hierro also gain a mention, as well as its osprey and the little-known bull shark from the ocean depths, together with the ancestral laurel forests of the Garajonay National Park on La Gomera and Lanzarote’s ‘Jable de Soo’ which has the largest concentration of houbara bustards in the world.