Which Canary island has the highest ageing index?

La Gomera at 302.7; Fuerteventura has the lowest at 110.7 (1 July 2026, provisional INE figures, our calculation).

Is La Gomera shrinking?

No, it grew by 7.0 percent from 2016 to 2026, entirely through people moving in.

Is tourism the cause?

Partly. It explains the young eastern islands, but not why tourism-dependent La Gomera is the oldest island.

Is La Graciosa included?

Yes, in the figures for Lanzarote.

What is the regional government doing?

Its November 2025 strategy targets shrinking and small municipalities, with no separate part for the western islands.

La Gomera: 303 over-65s for every 100 children

303 over-65s for every 100 children: why La Gomera and Fuerteventura are so far apart

On La Gomera there are 303 people over 65 for every 100 children under 15; on Fuerteventura there are 111 — almost a threefold gap within the same autonomous community. That is what the provisional population figures from Spain's statistics office INE for 1 July 2026 show, from which we calculated the ageing index. The obvious explanation, that tourism pulled young workers to the east and left the west behind, is only half right: La Gomera itself depends heavily on tourism, and over the past ten years more young people have moved there than left.

21 September 2026 · By Lucía Medina Reyes · 6 min. · Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief

What the index measures

The ageing index compares people aged 65 and over with children under 15. INE does not publish it in this table; we calculated it from the five-year age bands. On La Gomera, 5,678 older residents stand against 1,876 children; on Fuerteventura, 18,150 against 16,394. The table covers the seven Canary Islands, the two Canary provinces and the four Balearic Islands; Ceuta and Melilla are absent because they are not islands. La Graciosa, part of the municipality of Teguise, is included in the figures for Lanzarote. For the Canaries as a whole the index is 177.5 — consistent with our finding last week that the Canary median age of 45.73 years is almost identical to Spain's 45.83 (INE, 2025). What stands out is not the archipelago but the spread between the islands.

Ten years, every island older

In 2016 La Gomera stood at 193.8. Since then the number of over-65s has risen from 4,536 to 5,678 and the number of children has fallen from 2,341 to 1,876. The fastest ageing, however, has been on Fuerteventura: its index almost doubled from 58.8 to 110.7, while Lanzarote rose from 70.6 to 122.9. On Fuerteventura the number of over-65s grew by 74 percent, mainly because people already living there turned 65; at the same time births fell from 1,055 in 2016 to 866 in 2024 (ISTAC). In relative terms the gap with La Gomera therefore narrowed from 3.3 times to 2.7 times. And La Palma? The island figures show no clear effect of the 2021 volcanic eruption: the population fell by 244 people up to April 2022 and was back above its pre-eruption level by early 2023.

What supports the tourism argument

The argument: it is the economic model, not geography, that divides the islands. For the east, the data back this up. Fuerteventura and Lanzarote have the most tourism jobs, the most foreign residents, the largest share of 20- to 39-year-olds (27.4 and 27.1 percent, La Gomera 22.1) and the strongest growth. They are the only Canary Islands where more people were born than died in 2024: 866 to 588 on Fuerteventura, 1,099 to 912 on Lanzarote (ISTAC). The Balearics fit the pattern too: Ibiza, also shaped by tourism, is at 113.8, almost level with Fuerteventura, while Menorca is at 164.8 (INE, table 69797, our calculation).

What cuts the other way

For La Gomera the explanation does not hold. A third of jobs there are in tourism, more than on Tenerife. Nor do the past ten years show young people leaving: those aged 15 to 29 in 2016 numbered 3,132; in 2026 the same generation numbers 3,775, an increase of about 20 percent through arrivals (Fuerteventura: about 40 percent; our calculation from table 69797). From 2014 to 2021, the end of the ISTAC series, more people moved to the island each year than left. The difference lies elsewhere. La Gomera started from an older base in 2016, probably the result of earlier emigration that this table no longer captures. Many older people move there too: the generation aged 45 to 64 in 2016 grew by 7.9 percent by 2026 despite deaths, on El Hierro by 9.6, on Fuerteventura and La Palma by only 2.3 percent. And more people die than are born: 185 to 96 in 2024 (ISTAC).

What it means and what policy does

On La Gomera the age structure shows up in care. The Cabildo agreed with the regional government on more than 34 million euros up to 2028 for 250 social and health care places; new centres in Valle Gran Rey and Agulo are to add around 150 places, island president Casimiro Curbelo announced in January 2026. On Fuerteventura the pressure falls on schools: according to the Consejo Escolar de Canarias, secondary classes there average 22.5 pupils per group, against 21.2 across the Canaries and 15.8 on La Gomera. The Estrategia Canaria de Reto Demográfico y Cohesión Territorial, approved on 3 November 2025, comprises 43 measures. According to the government's announcement it targets 46 municipalities with population loss and more deaths than births, as well as municipalities under 10,000 inhabitants; Fuerteventura serves as the pilot for a population study. The announcement names no separate part for the three western islands — in August 2026 Curbelo called for tax incentives specifically for them.