This irregularly shaped square, the oldest in the city, begins when La Carrera street ends and ends where it meets the La Concepción tower. According to the minutes of the Cabildo of 1506 it appears with the name of Plaza de la Villa de Arriba. In 1530 as Plaza de Nuestra Señora de La Concepción. In 1758 as Plaza de la Pila Seca and since the 19th century as Plaza de La Concepción.
The reason that for a time it was called Plaza de la Pila Seca, is due to the fact that in 1532 the water pipe to Villa de Arriba was higher than the one that went to Villa de Abajo, the truth is that the water practically It did not arrive and in the end the battery ran out of the precious liquid. On the occasion of the festival of San Juan, the Cabildo organized bullfights in this square, and during Corpus Christi in the Plaza de Abajo.
Most of the buildings that surround the square are from the 18th century. In the current number 1, a sweet shop with a workshop was established in the middle of the last century by a family from Germany. Its first owner, Otto Rapp Singer, opened the establishment in 1927. The Court of the Indies was installed in building number 5 and was inhabited by the Casabuena family, superintendent judges of the Indies, perpetual and hereditary.
At the end of 1935 this building was occupied by the Orfeón La Paz. The inauguration ceremony was held on December 8 of that same year and included the participation of the lawyer Mr. Manuel G. Aledo, the poets José Hernández Amador, Manuel Verdugo and Juan Pérez Delgado, and the performance of the Strings and Choirs Association Of the entity. Until its transfer to the current headquarters on Juan de Vera street in 1971, the company’s own activities were carried out, preferably musical ones. Added to these actions were the distribution of toys for poor children on Three Kings Day, and the decoration and lighting of the araucaria, which is in the center of the square and is known as the Christmas Tree. Every Monday of Carnival (Winter Festival) in the part of the square near the headquarters of the Orfeón, many people would gather to receive the arrival of the Los Fregolinos float, with the extraordinary participation of the Spanish lyric singer Marcos Redondo. The house on the corner of Calle de Los Bolos was owned by the Cólogan family, and Admiral Juan Bautista Antequera y Bobadilla lived with his parents, who was born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on June 1, 1823, and was baptized in the parish of La Concepción in that city that same day.
He was Minister of the Navy and the first to circumnavigate the world in an armored ship. In the next building, a typical Canarian house from 1703, built by the Irish merchant Bernardo Valois, was the residence of the palm collector Cayetano Gómez Felipe, whose family opened the House Museum that bears his name. In a house, which no longer exists, very close to the church tower, he lived with his uncles Miguel and Catalina, from the age of 16, who would later be Sister María de Jesús (the incorrupt nun), until he was 25 when he entered in the convent of Santa Catalina, in the Plaza del Adelantado. Recently,
La Concepción square has been renovated, adding a small fountain in memory of the original, and integrating it into a pedestrian space that has revitalized the area, where bars, cafeterias and restaurants with terraces have been installed.
CHURCH OF THE CONCEPTION
The church of Nuestra Señora de La Concepción is the oldest parish church on the island. Although the current location is not the original place, it was in a nearby space, known as the Lomo de La Concepción, where it was held for the first time. in 1496, still a military camp, the Corpus Christi festivity. The first building was small and made of basic materials, which is why it became necessary to build a new temple in 1511, promoted by Adelantado himself. The works of the church are being carried out slowly, because the one in Los Remedios was being built at the same time, even this one was finished before La Concepción.
In 1530 only the head of the temple had been built, in 1548 the naves and in 1558 the works were extended to the north.
The works of the first temple are in a dilapidated state, so in 1738 a new building is started, respecting the chapel and the bases of the temple. In 1778 it was built again based on the plans of the lagoon architect Diego Nicolás Eduardo, and in 1808 the temple was made up of the head, the sacristy and the main chapel.
This church with three naves and a tower, despite being the first to be built on the Island, can be considered to have never been completely finished until the last intervention of the last century, including the reconstruction that motivated, when at sunset, a After the last mass attended by more than 200 people, the temple collapsed in 1972. The Baroque-style tower was erected for the first time in 1577, was demolished and rebuilt in 1630, finishing in 1697, just like the we currently know.
In 1601, the church had two bells of 550 and 400 kilos, which Agustín de Vargas, a steward, brought from London, paying 7,700 reales for them. In 1665, Gaspar Álvarez de Castro acquired another two bells at the price of 2,900 reales.
When the new tower was built, the butler Juan Alfonso de Torres bought two new bells at the price of 15,822 reales and a third one in 1717 that cost him 14,437 reales.
According to the journalist and writer Domingo García Barbuzano, “the last bell mentioned was so big that to hang it they had to chip the stone from the hole in the tower. It broke at the age of two, which led the town to project a bell considered the largest in the Archipelago. The chronicles say that to climb it, it was necessary to drill through each of the floors of the tower, since it only entered through the portal of the first balcony, and to use the force of 12 pairs of oxen.
Since the construction of the church of Los Remedios in 1515, a scenario of conflicts has been opened between it and the main parish, from where the Corpus Christi procession left for 25 years. A solution had to be found so that this procession alternated annually between the two parishes. In the 18th century, the Cabildo de la Isla agreed on August 21, 1750, to replace the old clock located in the parish of Los Remedios.
Such an acquisition aggravated the conflict, because the parishioners of La Concepción, with their butler in charge, request that the new clock be installed in the tower of this church, due to its strategic position. The Cabildo decides that the clock bought in London and that arrives in the City on June 2, 1751, be installed in the parish of Los Remedios.
