Dog Walkers in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain

What sets Santa Cruz de Tenerife apart from every other Spanish capital is what sits directly behind it. The Anaga massif begins fifteen minutes by car from the centre and is laurisilva forest — a subtropical woodland surviving from the Tertiary era that in Europe exists only in Macaronesia. You pass from a street thirty metres above the sea to a trail of mist, ferns and moss at six hundred metres altitude in a quarter of an hour. For a dog, that contrast of temperature and stimulus has no possible comparison anywhere else in the country.

Down in the city, the climate is of an almost boring regularity, in the best sense: gentle temperatures all year, no frosts and no prolonged heatwaves, which lets the same exercise routine run through all twelve months. The exception is the calima, when suspended Saharan dust sinks air quality for days and forces outdoor activity down — above all for flat-faced dogs or those with respiratory problems.

The city unfolds as an amphitheatre over the port, so the gradient is constant: the Rambla and Cabo-Llanos are flat and comfortable, but climbing to La Salud or García Escámez is another story. The Barranco de Santos crosses the urban core from south to north and organises much of the street plan.

The Parque García Sanabria is the centre of gravity of urban walking, with more than sixty thousand square metres of subtropical planting in the very heart of the city, and it works at any hour of the year thanks to the dense shade of its ficus and dragon trees.