On the Canary Island of La Palma there were several volcanic eruptions on the Cumbre Vieja mountain range on Sunday afternoon.
Pictures showed lava being thrown into the air and smoke rising in the area of El Paso in the south of the island.
According to information from the RTVE station, a crack with initially four openings appeared shortly after 3 p.m.
A fifth crack has since been discovered.
Hans-Christian Rößler
Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb, based in Madrid.
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The lava flow was approaching menacingly to some of the houses on the slope. According to press reports, German and British tourists hiked in the nature reserve on Sunday. A few hours earlier, an earthquake with a magnitude of 3.8 had been registered in the area after more than 25,000 light tremors had occurred in the past few days. More than 300 residents were brought to safety, and soldiers were called to the area to help.
Already since September 11th, experts have registered a significant accumulation of smaller earthquakes whose foci began at a depth of more than 20 kilometers, but gradually came closer and closer to the surface of the earth.
On Tuesday, the authorities had asked 30,000 residents in the southwest of the island to prepare light luggage and follow the current warnings.
The last major outbreak on La Palma was fifty years ago.
In October 1971, the Teneguía volcano spat lava for more than three weeks;
two people were killed at the time.
The last time there was a volcanic eruption on the sea floor off the neighboring island of El Hierro was in 2011.
The government announced that the affected region is a largely uninhabited forest area. The Canarian regional president Ángel Víctor Torres has phoned Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to inform him about the situation. Sánchez postponed his departure for the UN General Assembly in New York to first travel to the Canary Islands.