It is a forest that knows fire. The Canary pine has bark up to eight centimetres thick and sprouts again from its own wood after burning: in August 2016 a fire that started in Jedey burned 4,864 hectares of El Paso, Fuencaliente, Villa de Mazo and Los Llanos in nine days, with one forest ranger killed and thousands of residents evacuated, and ten years later the green has covered almost everything again. The blackened bark of many trunks still tells of that summer and of the previous fire, in 2009.
The pine forest holds two trees with names. The Pino de Santo Domingo, at 800 m, at a crossroads between La Fajana, Los Canarios, Los Quemados and Las Indias, has a girth of 4.60 m, a height of some 25 m and an age of between 350 and 400 years; at the beginning of the 20th century a resident, Domingo Díaz, paid ten pesetas so that it would not be felled, and today it has a chapel, a festival on 21 July and a recreation area. The Pino de la Virgen, 5 km from Los Canarios along a dirt track, holds a small religious image and receives a pilgrimage on the second Sunday of August. Higher up, above 1,000 m, the recreation area of the Fuente de Los Roques is the only water on the Volcano Route.
To enjoy it with care: do not light fires outside the authorised areas, respect the bans on high-risk days, carry water and keep to the trails.
