This article originally appeared on VICE Spain
Tenerife, Spain’s most populous island, attracts millions of tourists a year, there for guaranteed sun and hangovers. But just a few miles up the coast from lobster-pink Brits in unflattering sandals you’ll find a group of people who value a very different way of life.
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The island’s La Caleta beach is home to a hippy commune whose inhabitants have chosen to live with as few possessions as possible, embracing a simple existence with the aim of being at one with nature. The majority of the commune’s residents live in homes built into the rock face itself, while some have pitched up on the beach.
In September, photographer Nicolás Rodríguez Crespo travelled to La Caleta to meet and document the lives of the people who call the beach home. There, he got to know Brigitte and her three children; Fernando, an IT graduate who moved to Tenerife after realising his work for a large company was “based on destroying the planet”; and La Caleta’s longest resident, Papito, who has lived in the commune for 35 years.
Scroll down to see more photos from the La Caleta hippy commune.
