The legends, however old and forgotten they may be, remain alive in the most unexpected corners. In the midst of the cosmopolitan and touristic city of Puerto de la Cruz, valuable vestiges of distant times persist that, silently, camouflaged within the modern city, keep stories asleep due to oblivion. Due to an inexplicable contradictory process, the Port has not completely lost that essence of a fishing village that gave rise to it 500 years ago.
That old air is still perceived, in a special way, in the fishing neighborhood of La Ranilla. At one end of the neighborhood stands an illustrious giant sentinel. It is the Peñón, the Peñón del Fraile, a promontory crowned by a cross under a temple that claims to be one of the everlasting symbols of this northern city. And it is with good reason: the Peñón figured in the heraldic shield of the municipality for a long time, gives its name to the soccer field to which it is attached and to a local club, but, above all, it already has 200 years of history and is a Tourist city emblem.
That already long and busy existence deserves to be remembered by the exceptional events of which he was a silent witness and, many times, even the protagonist. This unique Rock was born from a volcano, a friar turned it into a place of prayer, witnessed executions, suicides and even a miracle, today it serves as a watchtower and sports box, and old legends tell that a pirate’s treasure is still hidden among its stones.
The Peñón del Fraile is actually a gigantic volcanic rock. It is believed that it was caused by the eruption of the Taoro volcano, or Las Arenas, around 1430. The huge stone rolled down the slopes and was finally stranded very close to the coast. Today you can see on it a classicist temple, simple, topped with a semi-dome and a cross inside.
THE FRIAR
According to the Puerto Rican writer and archivist Fernando Viale in his book La Ranilla: a retrospective look, it was called Peñón del Fraile in honor of Fray Juan de Jesús, a monk from Icodense from the Santo Domingo convent who made this, then remote and lonely rock, its chapel for retreat and prayer. In the upper part of the rock he placed a crude cross, formed by two dry trunks of verode. Legend has it that the simple cross flourished in such a way that it covered the entire bare rock. When the monk finally retired to the convent of San Diego del Monte, in La Laguna, the verodes dried up and did not reproduce again, to the great astonishment of the people, who took it as an extraordinary and miraculous event. Fray Juan de Jesús often went up to the Rock to better concentrate on his prayers in solitude. Finally, he moved to La Laguna, where he died in 1687.
THE MECENAS
The second protagonist of this story is a patron. The merchant Luis Carlos Lavaggi, born in 1768 in Genoa, settled in Puerto de la Cruz at the beginning of the 18th century after living for a time in Cádiz. He came to have great fortune and influence on the Island. He served as consul general of the then State of Genoa. He died in Puerto de la Cruz in 1828. His name is preserved in the city street and even in what was his residence. Surely moved by his deep religious beliefs and his love for his adopted town, in 1813 Lavaggi had the happy idea of ennobling the rustic chapel on top of the Peñón del Fraile. The writer and chronicler from Porto, José Agustín Álvarez Rixo, tells it in detail in his Anales. Lavaggi ordered the construction of the temple to dignify the existing cross there and, likewise, financed the paving of the annexed street that leads to the San Carlos cemetery and the planting of palm trees, which formed a beautiful promenade. On the great mass of lava he built an embankment where he planted a large bronze cross, and to access it he installed a small stone stairway. In 1815, homage was paid to the Genoese patron by placing a tombstone in his memory at El Peñón, a tombstone that, by the way, disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1855, the complex was completed with the construction on top of the rock of the current temple, which in 2002 was rehabilitated and its bronze dome and staircase restored, at the initiative of the City hall and the La Peñita neighborhood association.
THE ADJUSTMENT
The Rock and its cross were also privileged witnesses of an execution. As the writer and professor from Porto, Antonio Galindo Brito, tells in one of his books, one of the last vile executions in Spain was carried out very close to the great rock in July 1881. Two locals, the carpenter Manuel Brito and the bricklayer Pedro Armas, were executed for having stabbed to death in 1878 the administrator of the British commercial firm Reyd-Miller, James William Morris, to steal the key to his safe. The two criminals, after seizing the money, buried Morris in an abandoned grave in the nearby San Carlos Cemetery. The bad smell of the corpse ended up discovering their crime, and in that hot month of July 1881 they were executed with a vile garrotte in front of the Rock.
What many are unaware of is that the Peñón del Fraile from Porto entered the legend because of a ruthless pirate from Tenerife who in his time enjoyed a great and bad reputation, and who died executed without knowing where he kept the large booty of his countless misdeeds. maritime. We are talking about the Dog Head pirate. Although for some he was a fictional character, born from the popular imagination and fictionalized by the writer Aurelio Pérez Zamora, the official chronicler of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, José Manuel Ledesma, attests that he was a real character. His given name was Ángel García and he was born in 1800 in the town of Igueste de San Andrés. The nickname came from his unfortunate physical features: “His body was thick and stocky, with a flat nose, small eyes, a large mouth and gapped teeth, and a bulging, misshapen head that he often wore covered to hide his deformity,” he explains. Ledesma.
THE PIRATE
According to the official chronicler, Ángel had been a mistreated and lonely child who grew up sullen, surly and resentful. When he grew older and was able to own a ship, he felt free and powerful, and gave free rein to his basest instincts, becoming a fearsome slave pirate in the seas of the Antilles. With his ship, The Invincible, he gained fame and fortune by raiding and pillaging all manner of vessels that he found in his path, and mercilessly murdering men, women, and children. Curiously, he never committed his misdeeds in the waters of his native Island, to which he returned from time to time to take refuge in his house.
José Manuel Ledesma relates that, already old and ailing, and tormented by the memory of a girl he saw drown before his eyes without helping her, Cabeza de Perro decided to retire from piracy: he sold the Invincible and bought a ticket in Havana to return to Tenerife. As soon as he set foot on solid ground in Santa Cruz, his grotesque figure wrapped up in a striking white Indiano suit, with a hat, umbrella and a parrot on his shoulder, provoked the ridicule of the girls. Angel, angry, challenged them with his sharp umbrella and his knife, but they ended up throwing stones at him. The guards had to intervene, and there they identified him. He was unmistakable. They imprisoned him in the Castle of Paso Alto. There he remained for a long time until, about 1860, he was sentenced to death. They say that they shot him in Los Llanos, at dawn, behind the Infantry barracks, between the castle of San Juan and the Anacletos mills.
THE TREASURE
Legend has it that the treasures obtained by Cabeza de Perro in his many years of misdeeds around the Caribbean and the Antilles he kept them safe in a secret place and then poisoned his entire crew so that no one could find it. And so it seems. Some claimed that the Tenerife pirate kept his loot in the Wild Islands. Others, on the other hand, said that he buried him on his island, in Tenerife. Thus, several possible and very distant locations were cited, such as the Afoche ravine, in Güímar, or the Cruz del Draguillo, in Anaga.
Other versions claimed that Cabeza de Perro hid kilos of gold and jewels in the aforementioned Peñón del Fraile in Porto. They say that he kept it inside the rocks, in a crack that would have been covered forever after the works carried out in 1855, when they installed the cross and the temple that are currently preserved on top.
The truth is that the pirate Cabeza de Perro’s treasure was never found, as far as is known, despite the tireless efforts of many seekers. However, there were those who claimed that in the 19th century an Irish merchant found it in a crack in the Rock and left the Island with it, forever. But there is no evidence that such a thing was true either.
In short, no one can guarantee that today the fabulous treasure of Cabeza de Perro is not still hidden in the bowels of the emblematic Peñón del Fraile. The legend lives on.
