A corner to travel through the history of the Canary Islands

The proposal, which has been addressed since 2014 with the technical advice of Prored archaeologists, is to create a space to interpret the historical evolution of this corner of northwest Tenerife “from the settlement of the ancient Canarians in the Ereconde II ravine to the farmhouse news, going through the settlement and reuse of the caves after the conquest of Tenerife». Apart from the hamlet of Las Palmas, the jewel of this place is the set of caves for ethnographic use as pajero and cattle corral, which also have a connection through stairs carved into the rock. Caves in which, in 2014, material remains of Guanche origin were detected.

Now, with the support of the Cabildo, it is intended to condition the site with paths, walks, accessible stairs and two spectacular viewpoints. The initial proposal proposes the use of local materials and others that are integrated into the environment, “such as basalt stone for pavements and perimeter walls, corten steel for railings and signage, and wood for furniture and pergolas.”

The first viewpoint will be in the farmhouse area and the second, the most striking, will be a floating circular viewpoint, located inside the ravine to be able to observe all the caves. The Councilor for Cultural Heritage of the Buenavista City Council, Esteban Lorenzo (SSP), is one of the promoters of this project that aims to revitalize the village “with the Cueva Pintada de Gáldar, in Gran Canaria, as a model to follow and with the idea that You can also see the archaeological works that will be carried out in the area in the future».

Most of the previous works have been carried out by Ithaisa Abreu Hernández, Efraín Marrero Salas and Hacomar Ruiz González, from the Prored team, who have had to deal with “a notable lack of historical documentary resources”, for which the memories and the experiences of the neighbors are what have provided much of the data necessary to reconstruct the history of the area. The bibliographic review also found additional difficulties, “since the academic production on the Buenavista area, and more specifically on the El Palmar Valley, is really scarce.”

Archival information on El Palmar is also scarce, “Well, many documents have been lost, many milestones have not been registered, or are part of private files,” they detail from Prored. The information about the village of Las Palmas is even more scarce, “limiting itself to very specific administrative information”. In the archive of the Municipality of Buenavista, a series of records of owners of the rustic cadastre of 1956 were located, which allows knowing who the land and some of the caves belonged to, as well as the different uses of the land.

In the Provincial Historical Archive of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a map from 1765 was located in which information is given about the transfer of some land in El Palmar that adjoins the bed of a ravine. “It gave us information about what the area looked like and about the buying and selling of small and medium-sized rural plots during the 18th century. On this map we can recognize names such as Talavera, Camino de Buenavista to El Palmar or Barranco de Canarios, thanks to which we are located”, they detail.

Given the lack of documentary sources, Prored professionals have had to resort to oral sources, for which people between 49 and 88 years of age who live or lived in the village of Las Palmas or in El Palmar were interviewed. This has served to retrieve information about life there; the uses of the ravine and the caves at different times of the year; forms of property; the entrances; the animals and plants present in the ravine; anecdotes about people who lived in those caves; the discovery of some Guanche material; the Salto gallery; the house of engineor the stories and legends linked to the area.

In one of these interviews, one of the neighbors recalls the main uses of the caves: «In winter they put the goats there (…). And the dry grass was cut in the summer and kept there for the winter. It was dried and after drying it was stored. And from there it was taken when in winter you couldn’t go out maybe because it rained a lot, because they threw dry grass to the animals». Sometimes they also had other particular uses, such as tool rooms or meeting places.

This Ereconde II ravine has on its edges several houses belonging to the hamlet which, according to the researchers, “is currently in a state of progressive abandonment”, due to the aging of its population and the abandonment of the habitual residence, since Many of the houses have been restored for the exploitation of rural tourism. From the testimonies collected, the close relationship between the inhabitants of the village and the ravine and its caves has become clear. The gallery of the jump was used to extract water for human consumption and, once it was abandoned, its facilities were a place of recreation, not without danger, for the children of the area.

The project to be developedr will have an ethnographic and historiographical approach, since it is a documentary review and a recovery of the oral history and the memory of the neighbors in the area. Without forgetting the aboriginal past that was not completely erased, «since the conquerors considered that the aboriginal culture was susceptible to being reinterpreted by them, thus producing the processes of evangelization and re-education of the pre-Hispanic population. However, this coexistence in the territory means that, in turn, the conquerors integrate a series of local knowledge, such as the treatment of the land, the crops, the transhumance spaces”, as pointed out by Prored, citing Baucells Table.

The development space of the project belonged to the Menceyato de Daute, which included what is currently Garachico, Los Silos, Buenavista, El Tanque and Santiago del Teide. Different dwelling caves and funerary spaces have been found located in the municipality of Buenavista, such as those intervened and identified by Bertila Galván Santos in 1999. The review of the archaeological heritage inventory of El Palmar has made it possible to identify at least 35 milestones of an archaeological heritage nature, the mostly room caves.

Prored’s previous study highlights that “acculturation processes led to the abandonment of aboriginal practices and resulted in a very marked cultural miscegenation: on the one hand, the Guanche population was relegated to agricultural and livestock work, since they knew the best the territory and how to make correct use of resources (Rodríguez Acevedo, 2009), thus becoming mediators of the Europeans who settled in areas where water had an important presence, thus forming hamlets, such as Las Palmas. Changes in social organization and property systems occurred, with some Guanches becoming owners of land and cattle; others were enslaved, and others stood up.”

While the project that aims to make this privileged corner of the history of the Canary Islands accessible and interpretable for the general public is being developed, an in-depth archaeological diagnosis is pending, which will last for years and will allow a more accurate reconstruction of the historical evolution of the site before and after the conquest.