I take geology students to Tenerife every year and volcanic hazard is one of the things we study.

OK, as Dr Garcia says, there is an eruption on Tenerife around about every hundred years – Chinyero, a small cinder cone, in 1909, Chahorra on the side of Pico Viejo in 1798, and several small eruptions above Guimar and Garachico at the start of the 18th century but these are minor eruptions of slow moving basalt lava – and would more likely be a tourist attraction! Hawaii copes with this sort of thing regularly.

The sort of large and violent eruption the Sun article suggests hasn’t happened for over 2000 years (the last one was at Montana Blanca on the NE side of Teide) and, although one could happen again in the future it would be a very rare event indeed.

As the Cabildo suggests, much work has been done recently by volcanologists to identify hazards, assess risks and plan emergency measures for the island but these would much more likely need to be applied in the case of a small eruption of the type that destroyed Garachico harbour.

The piece in the Sun is quite an irresponsible piece of journalism. I’d love to hear from anyone who was actually ‘warned’ about travelling to Tenerife, but somehow I think that’s unlikely to happen. it’s an absolute non-story.

I told some Canarian friends about it and they found it bizarre, they couldn’t understand why a British paper would print something so completely inaccurate…but then they don’t know The Sun.

The paper should start to carry ‘a work of fiction’ as its by-line.