|
Canary
Islands Spain
The Canary Islands are Spains tropical paradise and for Spaniards
living in mainland Spain they are synonymous with holidays, as they
are for the hundreds and thousands of foreign tourists who pack the
islands resorts all year round. Colonized and populated by Spaniards,
they lie 1,150km off the coast of Africa. They are politically and
administratively Spanish and yet culturally and geographically they
have very much their own personality.
The Canaries today consist of seven islands divided, for
administrative purposes, into two areas. The province of Las Palmas
brings together the major island of Gran Canaria and the lesser ones
of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. The province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife
encompasses Tenerife and its satelite islands of la Gomera. La Palma
and Hierro. Within the archipelago there is a variety so extreme that
it is easiest to refer to it as a mini-continent. The isles share an
eternal spring climate but they differ dramatically amongst each
other. Exploring the Canaries you move from sub-tropical vegetation to
volcanic semi-deserts, from verdant cliffs and gorges to sand dunes by
the sea shore.
One wonders to this day when and how the ancients learnt about this
little paradise which Herodotus called the Garden of Hesperides, Homer
the Elysian Fields and Pliny the Fortunate isles. Modern contact with
the Canaries began to develop in the Middle Ages as sailors from
peninsular Spain arrived to plunder the isles of their orchids, which
were used to make dye, and of their inhabitants, who were enslaved.
Conquest in earnest only began with the Norman adventurer Jean de
Bethencourt who, in 1402 , claimed Lanzarote on behalf of his feudal
lord. Henry III of Castile. In 1483, during the region of the Catholic
Monarchs, Pedro de Vera established a base in Gran Canaria and in 1496
Alonso Fenández de Lugo won control of Tenerife. From then on
colonization started in earnest.
The original inhabitants of the Canaries were a race known as the
Guanches, a name derived from guan, meaning man or people, and achinch,
meaning white mountain in an obvious reference to Tenerifes
snow-capped Mount Teide. The natives lived a Stone Age existence of
shepherding and very rudimentary agriculture. They buried their dead
and, in the case of chieftains, mummified the, much like the ancient
Egyptians. In Tenerife, Bencome, the mencey or leader of the tribe,
fiercely resisted the conquistadors with his flint exes and slings,
while in Gran Canaria the ruling guanarteme. Semidán, welcomed the
European strangers and established truces.
The isles began to realize their potential for the Crown of Castile as
the links developed with the New World. Right at the beginning of that
awesome period Christopher Columbus, on his first voyage, rested at La
Gomera before venturing into the unknown, westwards in search of the
Indies. Before long the Canaies were to become the vital link in
transatlantic crossings, a stepping stone between Europe, Africa and
the American continent. Last century, as trade and travel increased,
the first hotels began to open in Tenerife. Since then commerce and
leisure have spread and never ceased developing throughout the
archipelago which still retains the paradisiacal qualities that earned
it such poetic appellations so many centuries ago.
|
