What you can see on the El Cotillo webcam
The camera looks south-west from a rooftop in the village. In the foreground are flat roofs and yards at the edge of the village; on the right stands the round stone tower of El Tostón, and beyond it the coast runs south in a long line of beaches and low cliffs towards the hills. It is a time-lapse that keeps the last 24 hours, so you can scroll back to see how the morning cloud cleared, and in the evening it looks straight into the sunset.
El Cotillo and the Tostón tower
This camera looks south-west over the rooftops of El Cotillo. On the right stands the squat, round stone Torre del Tostón, the old watchtower built against pirates, and beyond it the coast runs away south in a long line of beaches and low cliffs facing the open Atlantic.
There is no live video here, only a sequence of frames from the past day. Because the camera faces west, it is at its best in the late afternoon and at sunset, when the light turns gold over the tower and the sea. In winter you may see the white lines of the Atlantic swell breaking along the coast to the south.
A tower against pirates
The Torre del Tostón, also called the Castillo de El Tostón, was built in the 1700s to defend this coast against raiders from France, England and North Africa, and has been protected as a monument since 1949. El Cotillo grew as a fishing settlement around a landing place known as the Puerto del Roque, and for a time it was one of the ports on a trade route between Fuerteventura and Madeira. The harbour lost its importance, the village lived from fishing, and only in the 1980s did tourism begin to change it.
When to watch El Cotillo
Fuerteventura keeps the same time as the UK and Ireland. The village faces west, so the late afternoon and the sunset are the moments to look in. In winter, Atlantic swells roll in and break on the beaches to the south, a magnet for surfers; in summer the sea is usually smaller and the north-east trade wind blows steadily across the coast.
Around El Cotillo
North of the village, the lagoon beaches known as Los Lagos and La Concha have white sand and water sheltered by reefs. A road leads east across the plain to La Oliva and on to Corralejo and its dunes on the north coast.
Visiting El Cotillo
Fuerteventura airport is about 18 miles (29 km) away as the crow flies. The beaches south of the village are exposed to the full force of the Atlantic, with strong currents: for an easy swim, choose the sheltered lagoons to the north.