The social structure of the San Cristobal La Laguna today is sculpted by history. It is surely the municipality of Canary Islands in which the past exerts more influence on the present. Its nickname, Ciudad de los Adelantados, exemplifies it. And it is that Aguere, as the Guanches called it, is not only the point where the Castilian conquerors led by Alonso Fernández de Lugo settled for the first time after his arrival in Tenerife at the end of the fifteenth century. It was also an advance as the cradle of knowledge and illustration of the Canary Islands in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first university of the Islands was established in its territory, founded in 1745, and also the first institute, the Cabrera Pinto, founded in 1846.
These facts explain why San Cristóbal de La Laguna currently has the highest concentrations of technicians and scientific and intellectual professionals in the Archipelago. This is reflected in the detailed map of professions just published by the National Institute of Statistics. The rate of professors, professors, scientists and scholars of the humanities is very close to 50% in areas such as the surroundings of the Guajara de la University of La Laguna (46.7%) or a little further from the faculties, in La Manzanilla, in the heart of Vega Lagunera, with 49.7% of the population over 16 years of age.
qualified professionals
La Laguna has two other particularities in the analysis of the distribution of the population by professions and the comparison with the other three most populated municipalities of the Archipelago. Those responsible for public administrations and companies, located at the top of this statistical study, prefer to establish their residence outside the city center, unlike what happens, for example, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
This fact is very possibly due to the landscape and climatic attractions of areas such as the Vega Lagunera, the surroundings of the Los Rodeos airport or coastal towns such as Bajamar. It is there, together with the surroundings of the Guajara university campus, where the highest rates of qualified professionals in the entire community. In Guajara they exceed 8%, in La Vega Lagunera (La Manzanilla or Mesa Mota) they are more than 7% and in the most exclusive urbanizations of Guamasa, El Coromoto or Los Baldíos, near the border with the municipality of Tegueste, more than 5%. There are also notable concentrations near the historic center, especially in San Honorato (5.2%) or San Roque (5.6%).
Another of the peculiarities with respect to the other three most populous island municipalities is the weight maintained by agriculture, livestock and fishing, of great importance for the economy of the lagoon. The agricultural and fishing activity is concentrated in the coastal strip: Punta del Hidalgo, with points where these professionals exceed 6.5% of the population over 16 years of age; La Barranquera, with 5.2%; Tejina, with 4.1%; and Valle de Guerra, with 3.6%.
The dispersion of the population is another element that characterizes the lagoon map of professions. A demographic data is enough to understand it: up to 8 nuclei –the center of the city, Gracia, Geneto, Valle de Guerra, Taco, La Cuesta, Tejina and San Lázaro– exceed in population the twenty municipalities of Tenerife that have less than 5,000 population. The neighborhood of La Cuesta alone, with 26,551 inhabitants, multiplies by 15 the population of the municipality of Vilaflor, the least inhabited on the Island. Hence, the professionals of the intermediate scales according to their qualification –technical and support professionals, administrative, workers in the service sector, artisans and construction employees – appear scattered throughout these towns and neighborhoods that stretch from the border with Santa Cruz to the sea.
Distribution
The most distributed scale is that of services, restaurants, commerce and security. These professionals have a prominent presence, with rates above 20% of the population, in multiple areas of La Laguna: Taco (38.3%), La Cuesta (32.1%), Valle Tabares (30.6%), Tejina (27.7%) and Guamasa, El Ortigal, Los Baldíos, Geneto or Las Chumberas (with rates above 26%).
More concentrated are the unskilled workers in the university municipality. The Taco neighborhood leads the classification with more than 22% of the inhabitants dedicated to occupations for which knowledge is not required, but rather manual tools and simple tasks. They are followed by Punta del Hidalgo (21%), La Barranquera-Valle de Guerra (20%) and the Padre Anchieta and San Benito industrial estates, very close to the historic center, with rates above 18%. It is precisely where the lowest incomes in La Laguna are concentrated.
