Santa Cruz de Tenerife 2 Apr. (Press Europa) –
The Association for the Recovery of the Historical Memory of the Island of Tenerife (ARMHT) has revived a motion proposal to the City of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, requesting an examination, protection, and declaration of the site as a space of memory concerning the remnants and surroundings where the military battery of the Iron Barranco was situated. This location witnessed more than half of the judicial executions conducted by Franco in the Canary Islands between 1936 and 1940.
The statement elaborates that Santa Cruz de Tenerife hosts several sites associated with some of the most tragic chapters of the dictatorship on the island, including prisons, torture sites, and areas of resistance against the coup of July 1936, some of which are identified while others remain largely unknown.
With this proposal, they aim to highlight one of the most significant, yet possibly lesser-known sites for the general populace, given that the area is located within the industrial premises of the Petroleum Refinery.
During the period between 1936 and 1940, there were 122 executions in the Canary Islands following military trials, with 50 of those executed originating from Tenerife, 29 from Gran Canaria, 6 from La Palma, 6 from La Gomera, and 31 from the Spanish colonies in Africa.
Mercedes Pérez Schwartz, president of the Association, asserts that this is a precautionary measure, as this military area was situated on the land of the Petróleos de Santa Cruz refinery during the 1960s. “It is essential that any possible remnants and this environment be acknowledged,” she explains.
The organisation reminds us that the largest group of individuals executed during that period were either born or had resided in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
At this location, which was on the outskirts of Santa Cruz de Tenerife at the time, sixty-eight men lost their lives. Twenty were executed in the last six months of 1936, 31 in 1937, 2 in 1938, and 11 in 1940. The highest number corresponds to the ’cause of the 19′, the largest group during the Civil War in the Canary Islands. Most of them were young individuals, aged between 23 and 41.
The president of ARMHT believes that if this proposal advances, it would help prevent the complete disappearance of this aspect of the collective memory of a society that has yet to heal its wounds.
In this regard, she considers it a measure akin to those executed in other major cities around the globe, where the memory of victims of repression is preserved and honoured.
Besides its importance as a site of memory, the military battery of the Barranco del Hierro is part of contemporary history, positioned amid the threat of military invasion of the archipelago, coinciding with the Cuban War and the US intervention in the former Spanish colonies—an additional point of interest.
“In the orthophotos we have reviewed for this proposal, it is evident that towards the end of the 1950s, the installation was still intact, and it was not until the following decade that its remains were dismantled to accommodate fuel tanks, though there is a possibility that some remnants of its foundations or other elements endure, complementing the memory that can be established about this area, similar to what was previously conducted with the dismantled deposits of fyffes,”
