La Palma: the island that wrote dark skies into law
La Palma has something no other island in the world can match: a national law — Ley 31/1988, the Ley del Cielo — that controls every streetlight, bans upward-pointing fixtures, and dims the grid after midnight. The law exists to protect the sky above the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, where the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias sits at 2,396 m altitude. The side effect for visitors is an island with some of the darkest measured skies in Europe, over 300 clear nights per year, and 16 purpose-built astronomical viewpoints. ...