The eruption is not an anomalous event in our Mediterranean and Atlantic civilization. From the oldest songs and myths it is present in it and its catastrophes are told even today with dread. Together with the classical world, the biblical background of our culture also expresses the allegory of the eruption at the very birth of the divine norm. And the flames of the deep earth have later sheltered, in masterpieces, a religious geography of death and guilt.

Later, but already for centuries, exploration and science have intuited or described an interior of the planet with networks of channels and chambers of fire whose ends would appear in the igneous mouths of the volcanoes. In recent times of experience and reason, the explanation of its dynamisms has been sought, its maps have been drawn with the description of its places, its modalities have been classified and its disasters have been tried to be alleviated by knowing its behavior. Art has also created a parallel image of the strong beauty of the volcano as a specific branch of the landscape.

In its own territory, the Iberian Peninsula also shows dead or dormant volcanic landscapes. But it is in the Canary Islands where the eruptive manifestations have built all of its reliefs and where they are still active. The recent eruption of La Palma, after fifty years of volcanic calm on the island, is but the latest episode, for the time being, in the active physical construction of the archipelago.