Why the cheese matters here
Fuerteventura is dry, windy and stony, and for most of its history it fed itself on goats rather than crops. The Majorera goat is native to the island, bred to get by on almost nothing, and there have long been more of them here than there are people. Queso majorero is what that arrangement produces: a firm cheese with a distinct tang, eaten fresh, semi-cured or cured, and in 1996 the first cheese in the Canary Islands to be granted a protected designation of origin, which set the standard the rest followed.
Look at a whole wheel and you will see the diamond pattern pressed into its sides — the mark of the traditional mould made from plaited palm leaf, still copied in modern moulds today. The rind may be rubbed with paprika, which gives the cured wheels their red exterior, or with gofio or oil. The museum walks through all of it, and it opens the story much wider than cheese: the volcanic formation of the island, the aboriginal population, the arrival of livestock, and how a herding economy shaped the landscape you have been driving through. The displays are hands-on enough to keep children going, including a sit-down virtual goat-milking that is usually the first thing they run to.
