By Isidro Felipe Acosta. | Castles have always been present in the history of Los Realejos and, in fact, in the coat of arms of this Villa, on its left side, there is the one that was from the old municipality of Realejo Bajo, three castles crenellated, on a field of gules with two hypotheses about its meaning. One of them is that in Realejo Bajo there was the great Hacienda de los Príncipes, which constituted a fortress, and that it was defended by two small forts existing on the coast, that of Guindaste, now disappeared, and that of Mayorazgo. from Castro.
What nobody could imagine is that in the last third of the 19th century, Luis Renshaw de Orea y Ascanio, son of the former United States consular agent in La Orotava, impregnated by the romantic spirit of the time, who yearned for a medieval past, would build in the center of the Valley an atypical fortress that could be similar to other European castles.
Luis Renshaw, as well as a distinguished writer, author, among other works, of the book Domestic slavery in the Canary Islands, published in 1886 and founder of the first English newspaper on Spanish soil, The Tenerife News, was Count of Orea, Knight of Cape and Sword of His Holinesses Leo XIII and Pius X, Attaché of the Imperial Institute of London, Knight of the Order of Saint Sylvester and of the Cross and member of the Illustrious Heraldic Council of France.
He was also a descendant like his relatives of Sir Richard Renshaw, sergeant-at-arms of King Henry VIII of England and by the female line of kings of France and Hungary.
With this lineage, no one at the time could be surprised that his dream was to build this small fortress as a symbol of power and prestige of a bourgeoisie enriched by the booming industrialization and commercial drive experienced by the Islands.
Renshaw was born in Caracas in 1862, from where he moved in 1870, in the company of his parents and brothers to reside in the so-called Sitio Luna, in what was then Puerto de la Orotava. Luis studied in England, France and Germany, speaking these languages perfectly, which, together with his vast culture and his musical aptitudes, made him stand out from a very young age in the society in which he lived. The Count of Orea died in Geneva, where he lived, on December 10, 1937.
an english scientist
Although there is no data to prove it, it is believed that the Count of Orea never came to reside in his Castle which was acquired by the English scientist and music theorist, Robert Holford Macdowall Bosanquet, an authority on organ building who produced experimental and theoretical papers on acoustics, electromagnetism and astronomy, and who by 1890 had settled in Tenerife, remaining in Los Realejos until his death in 1912.
As anecdotal testimony, Bosanquet was already registered in the municipality of Realejo Alto in 1904, with a seniority of 10 years in the company of his faithful butler Cecil Bishop and two servants, Pedro Hernández and Vicente García.
From a wealthy family, he was the brother of the philosopher Bernard Bosanquet, one of the leaders of the so-called neo-Hegelian philosophical movement in Great Britain and author of twenty books, and of Admiral Sir Day Hort Bosanquet, Governor of South Australia. Robert was educated at Eton College and took first class honors in Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Balliol College, Oxford, and later became a Fellow of St.John’s College, working mainly as a Tutor at Oxford, and later as Professor of Acoustics at the Royal College of Music.
Bosanquet was a member of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Society, two of the oldest and most prestigious scientific bodies in Europe. After his death in 1912, he bequeathed the Castle to his butler Cecil Bishoop, and it was he and his heirs who managed it in later years.
An alleged German spy
During World War II, the Canary Islands played an important strategic role, so it was not surprising that both the Germans and the English had plans to invade the islands. A December 1940 report from the UK Intelligence Subcommittee alerted about the collaboration process between Franco and Hitler so that the caudillo would maintain Spain’s neutrality and Hitler would gain control of the logistics platform represented by the islands in the Atlantic. .
The report added that there would be at least 2,000 troops on the Islands awaiting instructions among the highly qualified German population of that time. A good part of those Germans, according to the British report, arrived incognito on the Islands in that same 1940.
Coincidentally, at that time the Castle was rented to Wilhem Von Weikman, a mysterious Teutonic doctor who would have served as consul for his government and in the years that he was with us, until the end of the great war, he carried out numerous studies on the history of the island.
The researcher and writer Alfonso Ferrer collected testimonies from one of Cecil Bishop’s heirs, Antonio Maestre, for whom there were several details that led him to think that that tenant was carrying out somewhat suspicious activities.
“To begin with, according to what some residents of the time remember, he was a man who was rarely seen. However, he had many visitors. But the circumstance that would have been truly revealing involved a cousin of his. Apparently, from the area of the banana trees that surrounds the castle, you can access the interior of the castle through a secret door. It’s kind of a trapdoor. When he entered the building, he could see a multitude of radio devices as well as several antennas.
Apparently, once the Castle was abandoned, the owners missed valuable furniture, including an organ created by Bosanquet himself.
The Castle Park Museum
Around 1960, the Castle was acquired by Fernando Weyler and López de Puga, and in the mid-1980s it would be transformed into a museum park. The building, with a square plan with four towers and two floors, was conditioned to be used to disseminate the history of the Islands for tourists visiting the north of Tenerife, being until the mid-90s the main offer of this type that existed in Los Realejos.
This business initiative was due to the efforts of Weyler himself, a professor at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid, and his wife Mercedes Sarmiento Vegas, who little by little filled the old walls of this unique venue with art with Guanche pieces. originals and other works made by the professor himself.
The museum had six rooms, two dedicated to the aborigines and the conquest; the third, to the Canarian contributions and the discovery of America; the fourth room, to the defense of the Island, and the last two, to culture, economy, ethnography and folklore.
The extension of the highway from the North to Los Realejos, which affected part of the car parks and gardens, essential spaces for this type of tourist complex, and the subsequent measure by the Puerto de la Cruz City Council to prevent the park’s free bus from picked up tourists in that municipality, led to the definitive closure of the facilities. In 1995, the plenary session of the Consistory requested the Cabildo de Tenerife and the Government of the Canary Islands to purchase the property.
In 2000, the facilities were acquired by businessman Jorge Bingel, and are currently dedicated to holding events.
