On the night of 21 December 1778, a tragic and ferocious fire occurred in Puerto de la Cruz, damaging a large part of the San Telmo monastery, the second in this town, and reducing to ashes the original hermitage and the first image of the patron saint. Under whose advocacy the church, which served as the conventual temple to the Dominicans under the name of Our Lady of Good Voyage, had flourished. This sacred site had been built “at their own expense and with some donations from the locals” by the Benedictine friars of the La Orotava convent in the early 17th century on land ceded by the Island Cabildo and the site indicated by Captain Don Antonio de Franchy Lutzardo y Fonte del Castillo. It was located in the splendid setting between the Atlantic and the royal road leading down from La Paz, near El Infierno (The Penitent), or as Viera y Clavijo notes: “… located on the shore of the sea, which would sometimes splash it with its waves…,” in reference to the former convent of Santo Domingo, on the street of its same name. However, most public, official, and private bodies, as well as communication professionals and the general public, refer to this relic of our religious architecture as Casa Rahn, instead of the former convent of Santo Domingo as it historically corresponds.
The guild of fishermen, facing the critical economic situation endured by the friars after the fire and their relocation to a house of the Catalina nuns in the church square, was tasked with rebuilding the convent and church based on the charity of the parishioners, and if necessary, selling a house they owned in the convent. The fishermen and sailors, who apparently did not participate in the original construction due to their disagreement with the chosen location for the hermitage, however, collaborated with materials and labour to reconstruct the monastic community. It is true that, in 1780, the year the Dominicans resumed their conventual life, the sailors, eager to have an independent religious site, upon noticing that after two years they still lacked the effigy of the saint benefactor and that the church was unfinished, made the firm decision to establish a new site. This time, it was out of reach of the sea’s fury, on the rocks of the Caleta del Rey anchorage, where it is still located today.
Thus, the revered image of poor baggage having disappeared, as A. Ruiz Álvarez recounts, “he only had as his own the habit, which the friar Bartolomé de la Madre de Dios had given him as alms, the cloak and a painted wooden candle.” The fishermen, faithful to their devotion and wanting to continue the tradition of the cult and annual festival for the saint, in 1780, with the contribution they were accustomed to provide to the guild of 2.5% of their working product, constructed the new hermitage, always by the seaside and facing west, towards La Ranilla. It was situated in the elevated plain where the then-called square of fishermen and the castle of San Telmo had been established, which today symbolises a beautiful vestige of the heroic and fervent past of Puerto de la Cruz.
The means of expansion and rooting of devotion to San Telmo in the Canaries, as writer Torres Quiroga states, has always been the same since the 13th century, specifically since the patron saint of sailors and navigators died in Tuy (a municipality located in the eastern part of the Bajo Miño region of Pontevedra) in 1246: through the words and fervour of Galician, Portuguese and Andalusian sailors who arrived at the Archipelago.
Those navigators of the first half of the 13th century had the fortune to meet and hear the future saint in his ardent apostolic work across all those lands and coves of Spain. They enjoyed his miraculous gestures by the river Miño, on the paths of Guimarear or during the military campaigns in Andalusia under King Ferdinand III the Saint. The men of the sea, cherished in life and in the glory of San Telmo, would have little time to spread the divine truth in a succession of voyages and ports, so often made real in the words and prodigious deeds of the saint. Thus, it spread from mouth to mouth and port to port, that faithful maritime devotion of the Renaissance, born in the present thaumaturgic of San Pedro González Telmo.
Like most hermitages built at the edge of the wave and sheltered by a community of sailors, this one in Puerto has, as J. A. Padrón Albornoz would say, “the scent of naked sea.” This one is rectangular in shape, with an archway of stone and a bell gable at the corner of the façade, and is undoubtedly one of the most picturesque and beautiful spots in the city.
Historian Ruiz Álvarez notes that in 1783 the then steward Don Jerónimo Luis Román donated, along with the image of the Virgin of Good Voyage, that of San Telmo, a dressing statue measuring 145 cm, “very rich in jewels and sacred ornaments.” In addition to the legacy of fervent urban and rustic properties. It is an anonymous work and was restored by the remembered sculptor from Orotava, Ezequiel de León Domínguez.
The act—says the port researcher—that refers to the celebration and cost of the festival was raised in the hermitage by the notary Don Gabriel del Álamo y Viera on 13 September 1773, in the presence of the parish priest Don José Manuel Cabeza, Captain of the Sea Don Cristóbal de la Oliva, and also Captain Don Manuel Rijo, Ensign Don Pedro Ugarte and the twenty fishermen who made up their guild. The said document states that “as they, as fishermen, and their ancestors have binding agreements to celebrate the festival of Lord San Pedro Telmo in this hermitage every year, and for this cult and maintenance of the said hermitage, they contributed 1.5% of all they earn from ships and companies. And as many could not afford the cost, having judiciously considered how to hold this celebration at little expense and that it should have permanence in the future, it was established that the celebration of said festival of San Pedro Telmo would henceforth be financed with the other expenses of the hermitage and worship from the proceeds of the said 1.5% from that day onwards, as well as the expenses of the festival of Our Lady of Good Voyage, which is now placed at the cost of Don Jerónimo Luis Román, a resident of this place, in the niche and altar where the old image was, and that said festival cannot exceed three hundred and seventy-two reales and five quarters, which is what this same year cost.”
Thus, the solemn celebration for the patron saint’s festival was agreed upon for the second Sunday of Pentecost, which for some time was celebrated jointly with the image of the Virgin of Our Lady of Good Voyage.
In 1826—narrates Álvarez Rixo in his Annals— when the festival of San Pedro Telmo was being celebrated, a boat loaded with men and women capsized, drowning four people. Therefore, for the coming years, embarking and sea excursions during this festival were prohibited. That year also saw the flood that on the night of 7 to 8 November swept away the castle of San Telmo and part of the hermitage. The tragic toll in all of Puerto from this temporary disaster was 32 missing persons, 30 houses destroyed, and six houses ruined. Of the victims, 15 were from the wreck of the frigate “Joven Gabriela.” The festivities were interrupted from that year until 1863, when the image was brought to the parish of Peña de Francia and then taken in procession back to its hermitage, without lacking fireworks and music. The last information from our 19th-century chronicler is from 1864, stating that it was celebrated with greater splendour than usual.
Despite these sporadic celebrations, the hermitage was not restored until 1880, when it reopened for worship, celebrating the festival until 1930. It suffered other interruptions throughout the 1930s, among other reasons, due to the Spanish Civil War. In 1948, the hermitage was opened once again, and the festivals resumed during the period of 1955 to 1967, at a time when massive sun-and-beach tourism displaced many residents from the neighbourhood to make way for new developments. Later, in 1968, the Episcopal Art Commission along with the foreign secretary for German-speaking Catholics in Bonn reconstructed part of the hermitage. It would not be until 2003 that a keen group of “santelmistas,” with the approval and collaboration of the Town Hall, restarted the celebration of this ancient religious popular tradition, complemented by a procession of San Telmo along with recreational, sporting, and cultural activities.
During the remembered festivals, the hermitage and the promenade of San Telmo were adorned with arches and colourful flags, while the nougat vendors and other fair traders enriched the festive atmosphere. Prominent businesses along the seaside promenade included “Rancho Grande,” “Bar San Telmo,” and “Miramar.” But after the procession and the Eucharist, the people would immerse themselves in the lively parties on the terraces amidst a natural setting constituted by the little beach, the cliffs, and the sea.
With the imminent celebration of the 10th edition, I wish that, despite the crisis we face, the party in honour of San Telmo is lived with optimism, joy, happiness, and devotion; and, of course, that the neighbourhood, through generational continuity, keeps alive the flame of the oldest popular tradition of its religious and cultural heritage.
