Between Nava and Grimón and Viana streets is this peculiar cobbled pedestrian street with stone benches that, since October 30, 2019, has been called the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country of Tenerife, by agreement of the Presidency and Planning Commission of the San Cristóbal de La Laguna City Council, meeting on April 2015. This name is due to the merits of this bicentennial institution that was born in La Laguna on February 15 of 1777, during the middle of the reign of Carlos III. This street is popularly known as the “alley of the nuns”, although its official name was first La Palma and during the Franco regime Ernesto Ascanio and León Huerta.
By agreement between the Cabildo and the Franciscan Order, resident in La Laguna, signed in 1546, the nuns occupied the monastery of San Miguel de las Victorias, property of the friars, for more than 30 years. Years later, a lawsuit took place that lasted over time and ended with the sentence of Pius V in favor of the religious, which obliges the Poor Clares to restore, within 3 years, the convent of San Miguel to its legitimate owners, who were installed in the Hospital of San Sebastián (Asylum for the Elderly).
The Cabildo, faced with the possibility of the nuns having to return to the peninsula and join other convents of their order, with prior royal permission of July 30, 1575, in exchange for appointing two nuns without dowry, points out to build the monastery “two lots of land, each one with 8 bushels of planting, of which they should be usufructuary for ten years.” The foundation deed would be granted on February 23, 1579.
Mrs. Olaya Fonte del Castillo, widow of the doctor and alderman, Don Juan Fiesco, in exchange for admitting three of his daughters as nuns, and granting her and their heirs a seat next to the main arch of the church and a burial in the main chapel, agrees to build the temple and dwellings for her, thus solving the problem. In a small alley located close to El Pino street (Viana), construction began on the future convent of the Poor Clares, this space is not reflected as a street in Torriani’s plan of 1588. To connect the alley with the nearby El Agua street (Nava and Grimón) some houses had to be bought and demolished and a palm tree removed, which gave the street its name. In 1674 Benito Hernández Perera endowed the feast of Santa Teresa in this monastery and arranged for a procession to be held.
On the right side of this street is the convent of Santa Clara, whose works were carried out in a short space of time, in such a way that on December 21, 1577, the nuns were able to move to their new monastery, coming from the Franciscan convent of San Miguel de las Victorias, where they had been provisionally since 1547, when ten nuns of that order arrived in the city of La Laguna, coming from the Urbanistas monasteries of San Antonio de Baeza and Regina Coeli de San Lucas de Barrameda. This building, which occupies the entire block, has its main entrance where the monastery church is located, facing this street. A tower stands out on the corner of this street with Viana, which is topped with a Canarian-Andalusian gazebo or mullion made in 1717. This convent, consecrated to San Juan Bautista, with thick and high walls, has two beautiful landscaped patios that communicate with the church.
Since its foundation, the religious community of Santa Clara had a very important growth both in terms of nuns and income, in such a way that in the 17th century it had around 150 nuns.
On the night of June 2, 1697, a fire destroyed a large part of the convent. The Poor Clare nuns were provisionally welcomed in the nearby monastery of Santa Catalina. After the rapid restoration, thanks to the master builder Diego de Miranda, in 1700 the church was finished and ready for worship.
In the 20th century, the Laguna religious community maintained a certain stability even during the civil war thanks to the support of the Laguna population. However, at the beginning of the last quarter of that century, the weather conditions, illnesses of some of the nuns and the lack of economic means, led the convent to an almost ruinous state.
The then bishop of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Don Damián Iguacén Borau, addresses the mother president of the Betica Federation of the Franciscan Order, the convent began to receive temporary help from various peninsular communities. The generous response of the Palencia nuns of Santa Clara was essential to begin the long path of restoration that relied on the help of the public administrations of Tenerife. Today the community has almost twenty nuns, who along with their spiritual work, carry out the manufacture of the forms that are later consecrated in all the masses that are celebrated on the Island. They also attend the Santa Clara Museum of Sacred Art.
In this convent of the Poor Clares from La Laguna, the tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages is also fulfilled, which consists of bringing a dozen eggs to the convent that the bride’s family must ask their neighbors, so that it does not rain on the day of the wedding, on some occasions the joke is said that if it rains that day it is because they have not brought enough eggs to the nuns.
The monastery occupies the entire left side of the street, where the two entrances to the church are located. On the right side, on the corner with Viana street, the privateer Amaro Pargo had a house. At first this alley was made of dirt, later it was cobbled and, finally, during the first democratic corporation of the Laguna City Council (1979-1983), it was paved with cobblestones from the central streets of the town, which were buried under the asphalt and began to be installed in squares, alleys, etc.
In the lagoon gatherings that were held in barbershops, shoe stores and drugstores, the anecdote of “General Fagón” was told, who among his many occupations was entrusted with cleaning the cesspool of the Monjas Claras convent. During one of the work breaks, he asked the superior if the influx of young black men from Guinea to the Seminary was so that, once they were ordained priests, they could officiate mourning masses. The superior answered him with a generous smile.
