Tenerife people angry at group that set up tents and played football on Teide

Photos of a group of people who set up tents, umbrellas, a barbeque, and played football on the Ucanca plain in the main protected are of the Teide National Park on New Year’s Day have gone viral, with people up in arms and calling for the authorities to denounce them for their actions to stop situations like this happening again.

Many users on social media have asked the Tenerife Cabildo to act firmly so that these types of situations that degrade this protected natural area do not happen again, as it turns out that in this time when people seem to want to rebel against being told what to do and having rules, are very protective of their island after all when people overstep the mark.

The good weather led many people to visit Teide yesterday, luckily, the majority, complied with all the rules of the National Park. However, it was early in the afternoon, in an area very close to the plain of Ucanca and the Zapato de la Reina viewpoint, an area that receives a large number of visits, where this incident took place.

Over the years there have been many occasions where people have been denounced for activities not allowed in the protected area, photographic sessions of communions, picnics, and recently fires and barbeques have been a worrying trend near the pine forests, which obviously have a huge risk of outbreaks of fire, hence are only allowed in the areas allocated for them.

In September, troops from the park's fire brigades surprised three "unaware" tourists who were starting a fire in the middle of the Corona Forest, who claimed they didn’t know it wasn’t allowed, thus avoiding a possible catastrophe.

As far as we are aware, the people involved in yesterday’s incident, packed up and left because of the negative reaction they had from the public and people telling them they were calling the police if they didn’t leave, meaning on this occasion they were gone before agents from the Forestal Commission got there, however, they have photos of the cars of the people in question to track them down.