Locals in Lanzarote got a fright when a 32-year-old British woman was injured after a seven-metre fall, from the terrace of an abandoned property in Puerto del Carmen. The incident occurred late on the evening of Sunday, August 16.

A difficult midnight rescue

The fall happened at around 11:54pm on Calle Princesa Guayarmina on Sunday evening. After receiving a call about the incident, officers from the local police as well as the Guardia Civil, Civil Protection officers, and Emergency Services rushed to the scene.

Once there, first responders faced an additional challenge: she had fallen into a difficult-to-access area, and the teams needed to navigate around a two-metre wall, on the terrace of the house adjacent to where the woman had fallen.

The woman sustained various injuries due to the fall, but medical personnel were able to stabilise her condition before transferring her to an ambulance, along with the help of emergency services. She was transported to the Dr. José Molina Orosa Hospital, located in Arrecife.

Circumstances remain under investigation

The full extent and severity of the woman’s condition have not yet been reported to the public. Authorities have also not clarified how the woman entered the abandoned property, nor the exact circumstances that led to her fall. Investigation into the incident is ongoing.

The dangers of abandoned properties for tourists

The Canary Islands, a Spanish autonomous community that is popular with tourists especially in peak season, is no stranger to unexpected falls and injuries on abandoned properties. One of the most infamous abandoned buildings in the community is the Añaza hotel, an unfinished luxury hotel located on a clifftop in Tenerife. This hotel has been responsible for multiple injuries and deaths, as thrill-seekers and urban explorers frequently visit the abandoned property despite numerous signs warning them not to.

Most recently, in December 2025, a 13-year-old girl fell to her death while exploring the abandoned property with her friends.

At the end of January 2026, two British tourists were heavily fined (€575) after visiting the hotel and taking photos on its rooftop, claiming it had appeared online as a “place of tourist interest.”

In May, another British tourist was injured after a fall onto a Lanzarote breakwater.

An unfortunate spike in holiday incidents

During peak season, as tourists visit places like the Canary Islands to unwind and have fun on holiday, the number of incidents, including falls and injuries in hotel and holiday hotspots where night-time events and alcohol consumption is often involved, unfortunately spikes.

A single rodent darting past a row of sun loungers is enough to make most holidaymakers screech. Playa del Inglés, one of Gran Canaria’s busiest beaches, is now at the centre of a rubbish and rat-control row embarrassing the island’s tourism chiefs in peak August.

Videos filmed near the sun loungers reached Spain’s national TV

Footage and photos showing rats close to sunbathers’ loungers at Playa del Inglés, Las Burras and San Agustín, all in the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana in southern Gran Canaria, began circulating on social media last week. Clips filmed on TikTok were picked up by Spain’s national broadcaster TVE and shared internationally, prompting alarm about the state of one of the island’s most visited coastlines.

@joseortega_00

Remy se fue de vacaciones unos días 🐭🌴#ratatouillememes #remyratatouille #grancanaria #humor #playa

♬ original sound – tuhog_man_only – KUNGFU_PANDAK

The Cabildo de Gran Canaria’s tourism councillor, Carlos Álamo, visited the affected beaches on Thursday August 13 and called the situation “completely unacceptable” pointing to both the rodents and the piles of rubbish nearby.

Town hall says there is no rat plague, only a chemical side-effect

San Bartolomé de Tirajana council carried out an urgent rat-control inspection on Thursday, checking breakwaters, stone walls, shower blocks, beach bars, decking, bins on the sand and gardens near the shore. It says it has run six pest-control operations in the area in the past two months, with reinforced checks planned for August 18 and 20 to test their effectiveness and find new risk areas. 

Officials insist there is no infestation. They say the recent sightings are linked to “shock” rodenticide treatments applied in the sewers, which leave rats thirsty and disoriented rather than killing them instantly, forcing them out of their burrows in search of water in daylight and creating the impression of a bigger problem that doesn’t actually exists.

How a landfill fire, a broken lorry and August rotas collided

Tom Smulders, president of the tourism and security commission at the FEHT, the region’s hospitality and tourism employers’ federation, told EFE that only “one rat” had actually been seen and urged people not to exaggerate the episode, while admitting a photo of a rat “is something very unpleasant”. He pointed to several factors behind the rubbish build-up: the usual rise in waste during August, holiday absences among cleaning staff, a breakdown affecting one of the lorries collecting paper and plastic, and this month’s fire at the Juan Grande landfill, which forced emergency crews to contain a blaze at the site’s pruning-waste store on Friday August 7. Restrictions on where rodenticide can safely be used around crowded beach areas have also slowed the response.

Double shifts and borrowed lorries are among the fixes on the table

The Cabildo has offered San Bartolomé de Tirajana “full collaboration” if extra resources are needed, and Álamo has called for responsibility to be established within the cleaning contract, held by the firm Faycanes, alongside tighter controls to stop the problem recurring. Proposed measures include double shifts for rubbish collection, with overtime pay, and temporarily borrowing lorries from neighbouring municipalities to cope with the extra waste generated during the peak of the tourist season.

The opposition is pressing the mayor for answers 

The rat sightings began weeks earlier inland, in the El Tablero and San Fernando areas, before reaching the tourist beaches, according to the opposition party Primero Canarias. Its spokesperson, Samuel Henríquez, has demanded that mayor Marco Aurelio Pérez explain what pest-control measures are being carried out and why the problem has spread, noting the town hall previously ran a €423,720 rodent-control contract covering the same areas back in 2022.

For now, tourism leaders are asking that the images not be allowed to snowball into a full-blown crisis for one of the Canary Islands’ most popular destinations, insisting that the clean-up is already under way, similar to rat problems seen at other Spanish beach resorts, and should ease within days.