El Tanque is a rural municipality in the mid-altitude highlands of north-western Tenerife, wedged between Garachico, Los Silos and Santiago del Teide, and one of the few towns on the island with no access to the sea. Its territory was historically part of the old Guanche realm and, after the conquest, of the wide Daute region, which organised the whole north-western quadrant around the mother parish of San Pedro de Daute. The town's name comes from a small tank or cistern built in the heights above Garachico to store and channel irrigation water; around it, together with the nearby hamlet of El Granel —named after a communal granary—, grew a scattered settlement of the medianías. From 1540 there was here a chapel dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua, dependent on the parish of San Pedro de Daute, which became the heart of the community.

The calling of these high lands was farming and livestock from the very beginning. Los Partidos de Franquis and La Atalaya, documented as early as around 1605, were large grain and cattle estates held by old landowning families of Daute. For centuries El Tanque was one of the island's main grain producers, its landscape dotted with threshing floors where wheat and rye were winnowed. This demographic importance led the mayor of Garachico to delegate duties to an official for El Tanque and El Granel in 1621, and on 16 April 1642 the town achieved full legal status as a municipality. From that agrarian society it preserves notable buildings such as La Alhóndiga, a 17th-century structure that served as a communal grain store, town hall, school, prison and temporary parish, as well as examples of traditional Canarian architecture like the Casa de los Martelos.

The event that marked the town's history forever was the volcanic eruption of 1706. On 5 May of that year (the eruption lasted around 40 days, until mid-June), within the very municipal district of El Tanque, the Montaña Negra or Trevejo volcano opened up; its lava flows devastated fertile land and homes, buried the original church of Saint Anthony of Padua, and ran unstoppable northwards until they reached Garachico, destroying much of the town and choking its prosperous harbour, the most important port on the north of the island. The disaster transformed the regional economy and the landscape itself. In El Tanque reconstruction was slow: work on the new church began in 1707 and was not completed until 1729.

Recent volcanic activity returns in 1909, when the eruption of Chinyero —the last recorded on Tenerife— affected the municipal district and caused agricultural losses that, together with archaic cultivation techniques and the fragmentation of plots, fed intense emigration to the Americas, especially to Venezuela and Cuba. Those badlands and cinder cones are today part of the Chinyero Special Nature Reserve and the Corona Forestal Natural Park which, together with the Teno Rural Park, protect more than half of the municipality.

The Charcas de Erjos deserve a special mention as one of Tenerife's few wetlands. They appeared by accident in the final third of the 20th century, when the extraction of clay soil left hollows that fill with rainwater and have created a singular ecosystem of lagoons, Canary willows and reedmace, alongside the fayal-brezal scrub and laurel forest of Teno. Today they are a reference point for birdwatching and a symbol of the natural value of these highlands. The municipality, spread across centres such as the El Tanque village, San José de los Llanos, Ruigómez and Erjos del Tanque, has around 2,800 inhabitants and combines the survival of highland farming and livestock with a rural and nature tourism that takes advantage of its trails, its viewpoints over Garachico, Mount Teide and the Atlantic, and the authenticity of a quiet, deep-rooted Tenerife.